The Art of Dreams

Reflections and Representations

Barbara Hahn, Meike Werner, Barbara Hahn, Meike Werner

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9783110433852
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Art Techniques
• Index: Literature

We all dream; we all share these strange experiences that infuse our nights. But we only know of those nightly adventures when we decide to represent them. In the long history of coming to terms with dreams there seem to be two different ways of delineating our forays into the world of the unconscious: One is the attempt of interpreting, of unveiling the hidden meaning of dreams. The other one is not so much concerned with the relation of dream and meaning, of dream and reality, it rather concentrates on trying to find means of representation for this extremely productive force that determines our sleep.
The essays collected in this book explore both attempts. They follow debates in philosophy and psychoanalysis and they study literature, theatre, dance, film, and photography.

Table of contents

• Contents
• The Art of Dreams. An Introduction
• The Authority of Dreams
• Sensible Dreams. Irrationality and the Philosophy of the Mind in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
• Representation of Dreams – Representation of Theater
• The Logic of Writing, the Logic of Dreams. Reading Gottfried Keller’s Green Henry
• “And I had to write it to you”. Franziska zu Reventlow and Else Lasker-Schüler: Dreaming in Public
• “Chaque époque rêve la suivante”. Or: How to Read a “Bilderatlas” of the Twentieth Century?
• Dream Bodies. On the Iconography of the Dreamer
• “Dance-Work” and the Art of Walking in Benjamin, Valéry, Rilke, Jensen, and Nijinsky
• Dreaming of the Mother: Notes on Love and Photography
• Dreamtime: The Specter of Cinema
• Contributors
• Name index