Wiktionary

dorveille

English edit

Etymology edit

Borrowed from Middle French dorveille.

Noun edit

dorveille (uncountable)

  1. (literary) A dreamlike semi-conscious state, such as while falling asleep or waking up, between periods of sleep, or from exhaustion; generally with reference to an altered mental state where there is no distinction between the fantastic and the familiar.
    • 2000, Anne Marie D'Arcy, Wisdom and the Grail, page 90:
      [Lancelot] has witnessed the miraculous cure of his fellow knight, but he understands nothing of what he has seen in his somnolent dorveille.
    • 2008, Emily Francomano, Wisdom and Her Lovers in Medieval and Early Modern Hispanic Literature, page 71:
      The poetic voice describes how, sleepless with lovesickness, he goes to the chapel, seeking respite. As he meditates there upon the cause of his "passion", he […] enters into a state of dorveille and has a vision populated with women
    • 2009, James J. Paxson, The Poetics of Personification, page 94:
      dorveille is a peculiar psychic, physical, and spiritual condition traditionally suffered by the narrator or human protagonist of the allegorical poem. Dorveille can involve the bodily exhaustion that overcomes the narrator at the outset of his text. The classic example is Dante, who, at the opening of Inferno 1, describes himself as pien di sonno – "full of sleep" (line 11). Dorveille can also involve the hypnotic lull and dizziness that overcomes the weary horseman who, as he narrates his poem, suffers from a wandering sense of attention and alertness (French rever).
    • 2010, Christine de Pizan, David Hult, Debate of the Romance of the Rose, page 106:
      the narrator is in a dreamlike state midway between sleep and wakefulness, […] "dorveille", a state that accentuates the inability to tell whether the events being recounted really happened or not.
    • 2011, Robert Moss, Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom, pages 21, 47:
      Among indigenous and early peoples, the liminal state of dorveille (sleep-wake) is a time when you might stir and share dreams with whoever is available. […] Sometimes a whole poem or song is delivered within a dream or in that fluid in-between zone of sleep-wake, dorveille.
    • 2022 January 27, Derek Thompson, “Can Medieval Sleeping Habits Fix America’s Insomnia?”, in The Atlantic‎[1]:
      When sleep was divided into a two-act play, people were creative with how they spent the intermission. They didn’t have anxious conversations with imaginary doctors; they actually did something. During this dorveille, or “wake-sleep,” people got up to pee, hung out by the fire, had sex, or prayed.

Usage notes edit

  • Usually italicized as a borrowing, most often used in reference to medieval poetry and literature.

Translations edit

Anagrams edit

Middle French edit

Etymology edit

Inherited from Old French dorveille.

Pronunciation edit

Noun edit

dorveille f (plural dorveilles)

  1. the vivid sleep when one thinks one is still awake; lucid sleep
    • c. 1365, Guillaume de Mauchaut, La prise d'Alixandre
      On dit que cils fait la dorveille
      Qui dort de l'ueil & dou cuer veille.
      They say that those [people] perform dorveille
      Who sleep with their eyes, but are awake in their heart.

Old French edit

Alternative forms edit

Etymology edit

dormir (“to sleep”) +‎ veiller (“to be awake; to be alert”).

Noun edit

dorveille oblique singular, f (oblique plural dorveilles, nominative singular dorveille, nominative plural dorveilles)

  1. dozing, drowsiness; more precisely, a state intermediate between being asleep and being awake
  2. (figurative) daydream, folly

Synonyms edit

Derived terms edit

Descendants edit

  • Middle French: dorveille

References edit

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