Philosophy, Dreaming and THE Literary Imagination Michaela Schrage-Früh Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination Michaela Schrage-Früh Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination Michaela Schrage-Früh University of Limerick Limerick, Ireland ISBN 978-3-319-40723-4 ISBN 978-3-319-40724-1 DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40724-1 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016955390 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 This work is subject to copyright All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland For David and Frederic Acknowledgements This book would have remained a dream without the generous assistance and support of family, friends, colleagues and institutions First of all, I thank the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz for their financial support, which allowed me to present papers at several international dreamrelated conferences, most notably at two inspiring conferences of the International Association for the Study of Dreams in Chicago (2009) and Asheville (2010), respectively I am indebted to the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Limerick, for funding my attendance at the ‘Cognitive Futures in the Humanities’ conference, University of Durham, in 2014, and for a generous book completion award in spring 2016 Completing this book would not have been possible without the support of my colleagues at the University of Limerick, who have in various ways facilitated and encouraged my research I would especially like to thank Anita Barmettler, Jean Conacher, Joachim Fischer, Margaret Mills Harper, Gisela Holfter, Marieke Krajenbrink, Cathy McGlynn, Patricia Moran, Tina Morin, Margaret O’Neill, Veronica O’Regan, Orla Prendergast and Maria Rieder Further thanks are due to Anja Müller-Wood, Patricia Plummer and Alyce von Rothkirch for their insightful comments on earlier chapter drafts, as well as to the anonymous readers at Palgrave for offering helpvii viii Acknowledgements ful feedback on the manuscript Likewise, I am grateful to Sibylle Wittek for her excellent research assistance during the early stages of this project Heartfelt thanks go to Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa, Marie Guthmüller and all members of the DFG-funded network ‘The Nocturnal Self ’ for fruitful discussions on a fascinating topic Most importantly, I thank Jennifer M Windt for our inspiring conversations which sparked my interest in the philosophical dimensions of dreaming On a more personal note, I am grateful to my mother, Renate Schrage, for being there from afar during difficult times And finally, above all, I thank my husband Rainer David W Früh and my son Frederic Samuel Noah Früh for their unfailing encouragement and loving support during the long and sometimes difficult writing process This book is dedicated to them Limerick, June 2016 Contents Introduction Towards an Aesthetics of Dreaming 21 Dreaming and Waking Imagination 59 Dreaming Fictions, Writing Dreams 131 Conjuring Up the Dream: Three Literary Case Studies 207 Conclusion 261 Bibliography 269 Index 291 ix Introduction Throughout the ages, dreaming has served as an analogy for the creation of literary fictions to such an extent that this analogy has turned into a metaphorical commonplace, evoked whenever we nonchalantly refer to Hollywood as a dream factory or to our nocturnal dreams as a dream theatre Depending on cultural context and individual inclination, the metaphor of fiction as dream has been either negatively or positively connoted, ranging from a view of dreams as meaningless fancies to a view of dreams as divine revelations Countless writers have, moreover, embraced the notion of a ‘dream-and-literature-symbiosis’,1 claiming to find creative inspiration and sustenance in their dreams, while their experiences have in turn inspired philosophical reflections Thus, the Italian Renaissance philosopher Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) viewed dreaming and artistic creation as analogous processes, showing ‘an awareness that dream and art function as modes capable of extending the imagination’s creative powers’.2 Paracelsus (1493–1541), too, acknowledged the dream’s creative potential and its inspirational value for artists: ‘Frome Rupprecht (2007), Primm (1987), 163 © The Author(s) 2016 M Schrage-Früh, Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40724-1_1 Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination time immemorial artistic insights have been revealed to artists in their sleep and in dreams, so that at all times they ardently desired them’.3 With the rise of Romanticism the aesthetic quality of the dream itself was increasingly emphasized,4 culminating in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s (1772–1834) view of poetry as a ‘rationalized dream’5 and Jean Paul’s (1763–1825) notion of dreaming as ‘involuntary poetry’.6 Even Robert Macnish (1802–1837), a nineteenth-century philosopher firmly rooted in the materialist tradition, marvelled that the imagination could produce dreams ‘lighted up with Prothean fire of genius and romance; […] magnificent poetry; [and] peopled with new and unheard-of imagery’.7 These ideas still reverberate in present times, for instance in Jorge Luis Borges’ (1899–1986) rephrasing of Coleridge and Jean Paul respectively in his references to literature as a ‘directed dream’ and to the act of dreaming as ‘perhaps the most ancient aesthetic expression’.8 In Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction (2011), Keith Oatley takes his cue from such analogies, in particular drawing on William Shakespeare’s concept of the dream as a ‘model world’9 from which the Bard’s ‘idea of theater as model-of-the-world’,10 comparable to a dream, could develop In his stimulating study on the psychology of fiction, Oatley repeatedly refers to this dream analogy: ‘Dream’ is a good metaphor for fiction because most of us have experience of dreaming and know that dreams are somewhat apart from the ordinary world We know, too, that they are constructed by ourselves They are not direct impressions of the world, and they may be meaningful.11 Paracelsus quoted in Primm (1987), 166 One such example from the Renaissance period is Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) See Schmidt-Hannisa (2001a), 85 Hans-Walter Schmidt-Hannisa convincingly argues that the Romantics were the first to establish an understanding of the dream as aesthetic experience See Schmidt-Hannisa (2001a), 84 Coleridge, Notebooks, vol 1, 2086 See Schmidt-Hannisa (2001b) Macnish, The Philosophy of Sleep, 67 Borges, Seven Nights, 40 For other examples of writers inspired by their dreams, see Epel (1993), Townley (1998) and Royle (1996) Oatley (2011), 10 Oatley (2011), 11 Oatley (2011), 16 ... monographs in the 1980s and 1990s, this is the first book-length explora- 16 Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination tion of the intersections between dreaming and the literary imagination. .. Primm (1987), 163 © The Author(s) 2016 M Schrage-Früh, Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40724-1_1 Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination time immemorial.. .Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination Michaela Schrage-Früh Philosophy, Dreaming and the Literary Imagination Michaela Schrage-Früh University of Limerick Limerick, Ireland ISBN