Dreaming and StorytellingAre dreams merely odd things that happen to us at night, sometimes pleasant, sometimes terrifying, but not to be taken too seriously? Is there any reason to think about them at all, other than in terms of questions such as "Why should Aunt Sarah turn into a bird and invite us all to dinner in her sycamore tree?" In this witty and eminently readable book, Bert O. States rethinks both the meaning of dreams and the relationship between dreaming and the telling of stories. Dreams constitute a private literature of the self, he says, that - despite their seeming lack of order or structure - can help us to understand the very nature of shared literature. Observers have often pointed out narrative elements that are common to dreams and stories - including "cinematic" visual techniques and such plot devices as reversals of fortune and paired villains and antagonists. Drawing on current work in such fields as neurobiology, cognitive psychology, literary theory, and dream theory, States asks whether dreaming and storytelling may share similar psychic processes as well. He first considers the bizarreness of dreams compared to the expected intelligibility of stories. He then surveys a wide array of stories and reported dreams, focusing on them as narratives with varied beginnings and endings, character functions, cause-and-effect relationships, archetypal structures, even generic constraints. Turning to the question of intentionality, States addresses the perennially intriguing question of whether dreams actually do have meanings, or whether we thrust meaning upon them. Anyone interested in the poetics of imaginative experience - whether approached from the perspective of the literary critic, thepsychologist, or the psychoanalyst - will want to read this enlightening and entertaining sequel to States's earlier book, The Rhetoric of Dreams (also from Cornell). |
From inside the book
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Contents
The Problem of Bizarreness | 13 |
Beginnings Middles and Endings | 46 |
The Master Forms | 83 |
Scripts and Archetypes III | 111 |
Meaning in Dreams and Fictions | 140 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alan Bates archetype associations Aunt Julia becomes behavior bizarre brain cathectic causal censor censorship character coherence concept concerned consciousness created creative Daniel Dennett distortion dramatic dream experience dream image dream narrative dream reports dreamer dreams and fictions dreamwork dreamworld emotional ence example experienced false hero Foulkes Foulkes's Freud function Gendlin's George Lakoff Gerald Edelman Globus Globus's Hamlet Hunt's Hypnogogia hypnogogic idea imagination instance interpretation Kenneth Burke kind least logic lucid dream lyric memory metaphor metonymic mind Northrop Frye notion occur patterns perception phenomenological Philoctetes plot poem poet poetic possible principle problem produce psychic psychoanalytic reader reading reality rose scene Schank scripts scriptual seems semiotic sense sequence simply situation Skura sleep specific story storytelling suggest symbolic tell tension thematic theme theory things thought tion Umwelt understanding waking fictions waking world words