Dream and literary creation in women's writings in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries / edited by Isabelle Hervouet and Anne Rouhette.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Hervouet-Farrar, Isabelle, editor.

Rouhette, Anne, editor.

Series:

Anthem nineteenth century studies.

Anthem Nineteenth-Century Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English fiction--Women authors--18th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

English fiction--Women authors--19th century--History and criticism.

Dreams in literature.

Women and literature--History--18th century.

Women and literature.

Women and literature--History--19th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 241 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London : Anthem Press, 2021.

Summary:

This edited collection deals with dream as a literary trope and the origin of or a source of creativity in women's writings. It gathers essays from the end of the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, with a strong focus on the Romantic period and particularly on Mary Shelley's <i>Frankenstein</i>, in which dreams are at the heart of the writing process but also constitute the diegetic substance of the narrative. The contributions re-examine the oneiric facets of the novel and develop fresh perspectives on dreams and dreaming in Mary Shelley's fiction and on other female authors (Anne Finch, Ann Radcliffe, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and a few others), re-appraising the textuality of dreams and their link to women's creativity and creation as a whole. <br><br>This book, therefore, focuses on an aspect frequently mentioned but rarely subjected to in-depth analyses, especially within the context of an edited collection bringing together several authors. Replacing Shelley's fiction in a female line thanks to its chronological span, it allows readers to recognize common points between the various authors tackled in the book, interrogating the paradox of the invasion of Self by a radically Other force from a feminine perspective and raising the central issue of authorial intention. One of the strengths of this collection is its coherence: almost all the essays included deal with Romantic and early Victorian prose written by women. They shed light on one another by looking at the same or similar texts from different points of view, using a variety of critical approaches (feminist, psychoanalytic, intertextual, scientific, aesthetic, among others). The other articles (on late-eighteenth- to early-nineteenth-century scientists and on Anne Finch) provide readers either with necessary contextual information or with welcome chronological perspective.

Contents:

Cover

Front Matter

Half title

Title page

Copyright information

Contents

Acknowledgments

Notes on Contributors

Chapter Int-null

Introduction

Part I WOMEN AND DREAMS: AN ONEIRIC FEMININE LITERARY TRADITION

Chapter 1 'Delicate Females' and Psychedelic Creation in the Scientific Experiments of Thomas Beddoes and Humphry Davy

Body and Air: 'a very beautiful pneumatic machinery'

Science and Aesthetic Pleasure: An Impossible Encounter?

'The fair fugitive' and the 'temporary maniac': The Sexual and Creative Power of the Female Trance

Notes

Works Cited

Chapter 2 Treading in Camilla's footsteps?

Chapter 3 The Passing on of Dreams

Part II DREAMS, ALTERITY AND THE DIVINE

Chapter 4 '[A]‌s somtimes Poets dream'

Chapter 5 THE THEOLOGY OF RADCLIFFE'S DREAMS

Chapter 6 PROVIDENTIAL THINKING

Part III DREAMING (OF) MONSTERS

Chapter 7 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Approach to Dreams and Dreaming in her Fictional Works Frankenstein, Valperga, Matilda and 'The Dream'

The Philosophical, Medical and Literary Hypotexts of Dreams in Frankenstein and Valperga

Exploring the Female Mind: Dreams in Matilda, Valperga and 'The Dream'

Conclusion: 'Life is a Dream' - Dream as Metaphor in Mary Shelley

Chapter 8 THE MONSTER OF THEIR DREAMS

Symptoms of Sleep Paralysis in Frankenstein and Mary Shelley's 'Introduction'

The Monster of Her Dreams?

Sleep Paralysis in Folklore and Art

Chapter 9 HENRY FUSELI'S NIGHTMARE(S) IN MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN (1818)

Mary Shelley's Nightmares in the 1831 'Introduction'

The 1831 'Introduction' and Literary Bedside Scenes

Fuseli's Nightmare(s) in Volume I, Chapter 4.

When the Nightmare Comes True (Volume III)

The Emblematic Scenes of Elizabeth's Death

Part IV BEYOND FRANKENSTEIN

Chapter 10 DREAMING UP MONSTERS

Historicizing the Dream: From Revelation to Disorder

Suggesting the Supernatural: The Reality of the Dream in Wuthering Heights

Disrupting Gothic Expectations: Distinctive Approaches to the Tandem Dream Sequence

Building on the Tandem Dream Sequence: The Nightmare of Reality in Frankenstein

Awakening from a Trance: The Realization of a Dream in Frankenstein

Turning the Nightmare Inward: The Extremes of Dream Science in Frankenstein

The Affective Potential of Dreams in Nineteenth-Century Literature

Chapter 11 'AND THIS SHALL BE MY DREAM TONIGHT'

The Poems

Dreaming, Transcendence, and the Imagination

Note

Chapter 12 DREAMS IN JANE EYRE

The Sister Dream

The Child Dream

Dreams of Mourning

POSTSCRIPT

End Matter

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 23 Feb 2022).

ISBN:

1-78527-753-7

1-78527-754-5

OCLC:

1252427261