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Stillinger's 18th Spoken Interpretation, Authenticity Of

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The term dream is known for imaginative thought, feelings, emotions, and perhaps deep wishful thinking: wishes dreamed to come true. In Jack Stillinger’s 18th token Interpretation, Authenticity of dreams, he describes about the many readings that are connected within dreaming and how it is the most common images in Romantic poetry. Stillinger describes the difference and similarities with Realism vs. Imaginative dreams and supports his theory of dreaming well with some readings he gives. He states how dreams can sometimes as well be a negative perspective such as the feeling of emptiness and the unreality that a person may be missing or wanting in their lives. The following will describe about Stillinger’s theory of Authenticity of dreams and …show more content…

Stillinger supports this thought by stating the plot in the Endymion which entails a dream from a hero of an unknown goddess. The issue with the plot is that it takes a debate on whether the dream-goddess is reality or fantasy. The book then later reveals that Endymion chooses the dream to be false: “I have clung / To nothing, lov’d a nothing, nothing seen / Or felt but a great dream!” (Keasts, 4.636-38). In other words, the character chose to believe that his dream was in fact only a dream of falsehood for he did not see nothing but only felt the emotion of the dream resulting to him loving nothing that really had …show more content…

Agnes. Here in this story we see both reality and dream, yet the main question to this story is what is truly real and to what extent is a “real world”. Starting with Madeline who desires “for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year” (Keats, line 63). Madeline yearns for the dream of love, happiness, and is basically alive for love. Porphyro as well has a dream but it is to be sexual with Madeline and have her be his. Once Porphyro and Madeline come together she is tricked by Porphyro that he is her one true dream love resulting Madeleine to give her virtue to him. Once this occurs, she is then awaken from her dream facing a reality world that she did not expect and did not want to happen; here is when dream is faced into the reality world. As for Porphyro, his dreams came true to reality for he even states to Madeline: “sweet dreamer! lovely bride!” (Keats, lines 324, 334). Stillinger is correct when he states that “the poem is about dreams becoming reality” supporting his ideal of Authenticity of

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