-
Introduction: The Literatures of Dreaming
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Introduction The Literatures of Dreaming ann marie plane and leslie tuttle Could it be that the rationalism of Western modernity was inspired by a dream? In 1619, a twenty-three-year-old soldier named René Descartes separated himself from society to undertake a kind of personal philosophical retreat. More than fifteen years would pass before Descartes published the Discourse on Method, a seminal work of modern philosophy proposing that truth can only be attained through the disciplined application of doubt and human reason.1 On one memorable November night during his retreat, however, the young man experienced three vivid dreams in rapid succession . The first two dreams featured frightful forces of nature such as buffeting winds that blew him sideways and sparks of fire. They also incorporated baffling elements, like a stranger who offered him an exotic melon from a faraway land. In the third dream, Descartes was presented with a succession of Latin books and poems and invited to ponder his life’s calling. This last dream culminated in a striking realization that the treasury of wisdom left by the ancients (represented by the Latin books) was contradictory and incomplete. Writing about these dream experiences later in a personal notebook , Descartes concluded that dream images so distinct, memorable, and persuasive were surely messages sent ‘‘from above.’’2 The irony of all this, of course, is that when Descartes reflected on his dreams, seeking meaning and guidance for his life, he was engaging in precisely the kind of ancient interpretive practice that his work as a philosopher would ultimately call into question. Descartes, often credited as the founder of rationalist philosophy, seems an unlikely disciple of dreams. Yet in seeking meaning in dreams, he was far from unusual. In the early seventeenth century, many elite, well-educated Europeans like Descartes understood dreams as means through which an individual soul might be touched 2 Introduction by supernatural forces. Like people in most of the world’s cultures throughout human history, early modern European men and women believed that dreams could be messages from God, the machinations of demons, a visit from the dead, or a vision of the future. Interpreting their dreams in much the same ways as their ancient and medieval forebears had done—indeed, often using the dream guides these forebears had written—they sought to decipher their nighttime visions, rejoicing in the ones heralding good fortune and consulting physicians, clerics, or magical practitioners when their dreams seemed ominous.3 This volume suggests that people of the early modern era—a period that stretches roughly from 1450 to 1800—had a special interest in the meaning of dreams. Attention to early modern discourses about dreams provides a unique opportunity to better understand a critical era of cultural transition. Historically, many cultures treat dreams as valuable sources of knowledge not available by other means. In some cases, the dream is believed to offer connection to the divine; in others, it has been seen as a pathway to obscure inner resources of the unconscious mind. Yet even when dreams are accorded authority as a source of knowledge, they are also sometimes scorned and marginalized, treated as unreliable, difficult to decipher, even deceptive. Those who interpret them have been dismissed as charlatans, whether they were the dream readers at work in the agoras of ancient Greece, medieval visionaries, Native American shamans treating a suffering patient, or medical men sitting behind a psychoanalytic couch. Given this dual quality, dreams and the struggle to explain them offer a unique vantage point from which to examine the social construction of truth and meaning in a historical period often considered the crucible of the modern world. Although dreaming is of course a universal phenomenon, the essays that follow focus on the role of night dreams and waking visions in the unique constellation of cultures that coalesced around the Atlantic basin during the early modern era. The period witnessed a wave of European colonial expansion into Asia, Africa, and, most extensively, the Americas that launched vast movements of goods and people, instigated conflict, fostered trade, and engendered a new intensity of encounters between cultures that in previous centuries had known little or nothing of one another. Historians use the term ‘‘Atlantic World,’’ as a shorthand to refer to the Atlantic side of these global interconnections from the sixteenth century through the eighteenth century. In the Atlantic world, people were drawn into new, (2024-03-19 02:20 GMT) Introduction 3 often devastatingly exploitative...