The paper brings together three rather unlikely texts, the thirteenth-century Byzantine romance The Tale of Livistros and Rodamne, the thirteenth-century Old French Roman de la Rose, and the fifteenth-century Italian prose romance Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which are characterized by their lengthy dream narratives in which a first-person narrator is initiated in the art and the mysteries of love. Focusing on a group of instructive speeches contained within or indirectly connected with these dream narratives, this paper examines instruction as an integral component of the initiation process and as a powerful rhetorical tool moving the narrative – and the love story of the protagonist couple – forward. In doing so, the paper also highlights the ideas about love expressed in each of the three romances, the ways that they interconnect and the ways that they differ.
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