Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198183631 ISBN 13: 9780198183631

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1999

Synopsis

Reading Dreams contains seven new essays, based on new research, on the representation and interpretation of medieval and Renaissance dreams. The textual focus is both literary and non-literary. Chaucer and Shakespeare are important reference-points, while Langland, the Pearl-poet and Milton receive significant coverage. Diaries, philosophical texts, polemical writings, works on dream theory and medical treatises are also extensively used. The methodology is a mixture of close reading, detailed comparison and contextualising. Theoretical approaches are drawn from Freud, anthropology, social history and gender studies as well as from literary criticism.

This is the first time that English-speaking scholars have collaborated to produce a book about medieval and Renaissance dreams. Their essays are designed to develop innovative and novel approaches of a variety and range possible only in a specially commissioned collection of essays. At the same time, there are recurrent preoccupations, such as the relationship of theory to text, and the status of dreams as historical evidence. The authors open up new areas of enquiry, and suggest and exemplify possible approaches. In so doing, and by including three scholars who have written acclaimed works on medieval dreams (A. C. Spearing, Kathryn Lynch and Steven Kruger), Reading Dreams will provide an authoritative advance on previous studies. It also represents a new departure by extending the debate across the medieval and Renaissance periods.

About this title

About the Author

Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Director of the Canterbury Centre for Medieval & Tudor Studies at the University of Kent (1993)

Visiting Professor in English Literature, University of California at Los Angeles (1992-93)

Distinguished Visiting Professor in Medieval Studies, University of Connecticut at Storrs (1991-92)

Visiting Assistant Professor, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (198283)

Lecturer in English and American Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury (1977-93)

Tutor in Medieval English Literature, University of Exeter (1976-77)

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198183631
• ISBN 13: 9780198183631
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 204
• Editor: Brown Peter