Dream-books

The thesis investigates the folk tradition of dream interpretation in the eastern Slavic culture. Essential materials for the research are narratives about prophetic dreams recorded by the author in the Poltava region (2012–2018 years). The work aims at describing the ways of dream interpretation, which are (almost) not reflected in the “oral dream books” (commentaries of informants accompanying the story about a prophetic dream, and other explanatory narratives). For this purpose, the author describes invariant narrative schemes that are common for narratives about prophetic dreams containing the similar logic of interpretation. Analyzing the texts, we can conclude that a dreamer has pretty much freedom in attributing interpretations to dreams. Interpretation of a dream plot depends on emotional and sensual components of dream experience, individual associations of a dreamer, and a context in which a dream is told and interpreted. In spite of the singularity of every dream and dreamer, the traditional interpretations of dream plots are not arbitrary: they come down to the models, which are revealed in the work. These invariant narrative structures (“interpretation models”) can be derived from the prophetic dream narratives, but not from brief formulae “if you see in the dream X, it predicts Y in reality”. The common structures of dream plots (which have similar “prophetic meaning”) correlate with the narrative schemas underlying the folklore texts of other genres (riddles, fairy tales, belief narratives and so on).

Although the actual dreaming experience of the Byzantines lies beyond our reach, the remarkable number of dream narratives in the surviving sources of the period attests to the cardinal function of dreams as vehicles of meaning, and thus affords modern scholars access to the wider cultural fabric of symbolic representations of the Byzantine world. Whether recounting real or invented dreams, the narratives serve various purposes, such as political and religious agendas, personal aspirations or simply an author’s display of literary skill. It is only in recent years that Byzantine dreaming has attracted scholarly attention, and important publications have suggested the way in which Byzantines reshaped ancient interpretative models and applied new perceptions to the functions of dreams.

This book - the first collection of studies on Byzantine dreams to be published - aims to demonstrate further the importance of closely examining dreams in Byzantium in their wider historical and cultural, as well as narrative, context. Linked by this common thread, the essays offer insights into the function of dreams in hagiography, historiography, rhetoric, epistolography, and romance. They explore gender and erotic aspects of dreams; they examine cross-cultural facets of dreaming, provide new readings, and contextualize specific cases; they also look at the Greco-Roman background and Islamic influences of Byzantine dreams and their Christianization. The volume provides a broad variety of perspectives, including those of psychoanalysis and anthropology.

Contents:

    Prologue
    Dreaming in the Life of Cyril Phileotes, Margaret Mullett
    The morphology of healing dreams: dream and therapy in Byzantine collections of miracle stories, Stavroula Constantinou
    Ecstasy as a form of visionary experience in early Byzantine monastic literature, Bettina Krönung
    The heavenly city: religious and secular visions of the other world in Byzantine literature, Carolina Cupane
    A little revelation for personal use, Christine Angelidi
    Prokopios’ dream before the campaign against Libya: a reading of Wars 3.12.1-5, Ilias Anagnostakis
    Dream narratives in the Continuation of Theophanes, George T. Calofonos
    The historiography of dreaming in medieval Byzantium, Paul Magdalino
  The dream-key manuals of Byzantium, Steven M. Oberhelman
    Byzantine and Islamic dream interpretation: a comparative approach to the problem of ‘reality’ vs ‘literary tradition’, Maria Mavroudi
    Fluid dreams, solid consciences: erotic dreams in Byzantium, Charis Messis
    Gender ambiguity in dreams of conversion, prophecy and creativity, Barbara Tedlock
    Psychoanalysis and Byzantine oneirographia, Catia Galatariotou
    Index.

About the Editors:

    Christine Angelidi is Research Director Emerita at the Institute of Historical Research of the Hellenic National Research Foundation, Greece.
    George T. Calofonos is Research Associate at the Institute of Historical Research of the Hellenic National Research Foundation, Greece."

The article considers the search queries containing the phrase “what does dream mean” (or similar phrases) which were made by Internet users from Poltava region (the material for the analysis was obtained using a tool “Keyword Planner” in Google AdWords). In the light of the hypothesis that cultural notions about the rules of dream interpretation influence how a user formulates a web search query about meaning of a dream, the content of search queries has been compared with the records of interviews (oral dream books and prophetic dream narratives) conducted in the same region (2012–2018). In the article are revealed correlations and discrepancies between texts of web search queries (frequently searched items) and popular symbols of oral dream books or frequently recorded motives of prophetic dreams narratives.

The Somniale Danielis is one of the most common dream manuals of the Middle Ages and has been translated from Greek into numerous vernacular languages, both in Europe and the Middle East. However, its Italian translation has been overlooked, even though it is part of important and well-known codices such as the Laurentian MSS Martelli 12 and Tempi 2, and the MS Vaticano Rossiano 947. During the fourteenth century, the church strongly opposed books of prognostic nature, therefore copyists tended to omit the name of the biblical prophet in order to avoid censorship. These codices are miscellanies that bear major examples of early Italian literature, in which dreams and visions play a significant role. The material association of these literary texts with the Dreambook of Daniel, transcribed in the appendix of this essay, underlines the exegetical goal that copyists had in mind, as they helped readers in their interpretation of oneiric symbols.

Delle numerose traduzioni dal greco ai maggiori volgari europei e mediorientali del Somniale Danielis, il più comune prontuario dei sogni durante il medioevo, quella in italiano rimaneva ignota pur se presente in manoscritti importanti e conosciuti come i codici Laurenziani Martelli 12, Tempi 2, e il cod. Vaticano Rossiano 947. A causa dell’opposizione ecclesiastica ai libri di natura prognostica i copisti, nel corso del XIV sec., omettono il nome del profeta biblico nel titolo per sfuggire alla censura, compromettendone l’attribuzione. Questi codici hanno la particolarità di essere miscellanee in cui sono presenti gli esempi più notevoli della lettatura italiana delle origini dove i sogni e le visioni svolgono un ruolo significativo. L’associazione materiale di queste opere con il Libro dei sogni di Daniele, trascritto in appendice al saggio, offriva al lettore un aiuto interpretativo dei passaggi onirici.