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This edited collection deals with dream as a literary trope and as a source of creativity in women’s writings. It gathers essays spanning a time period 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 Frankenstein, 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.
“This superb collection of interdisciplinary work on dreams in 18th and 19th century literature is essential reading for students of the period. As a student and teacher of works in the long nineteenth century, I encountered fresh approaches to works I thought I knew well, such as Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre, and I especially appreciate that the collection puts the dreams of 18th and 19th century dreaming into a longer framework that includes scientific approaches to dreams as well as other literary works that include Pilgrim’s Progress and more recent writers: Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Sayers, Irish Murdoch, and Margaret Drabble.” — Carol A. Senf, Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US
Acknowledgements; Notes on Contributors; 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, Kimberley Page-Jones; Chapter 2. Treading in Camilla’s Footsteps?: Oneiric Experience and Women’s Voices in Julia De Vienne (by a Lady, 1811) and Tales of Fancy (Sarah Harriet Burney, 1816– 20), Lucy- Anne Katgely; Chapter 3. The Passing on of Dreams: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley and the Diana Figure, Audrey Souchet; PART II. DREAMS, ALTERITY AND THE DIVINE; Chapter 4. ‘[A]s Sometimes Poets Dream’: Liminality and the Female Writer in the Poetry of Anne Finch, Debapriya Basu; Chapter 5. The Theology of Radcliff e’s Dreams, Holly Hirst; Chapter 6. Providential Thinking: Dreams and the Rhetoric of Romance in The Old English Baron and The Romance of the Forest, Victor Sage; PART III. DREAMING (OF) MONSTERS: DREAMS, CREATIVITY AND AESTHETICS IN MARY SHELLEY’S FICTION; Chapter 7. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Approach to Dreams and Dreaming in Her Fictional Works Frankenstein, Valperga, Matilda and ‘The Dream’, Antonella Braida-Laplace; Chapter 8. The Monster of Their Dreams: The Night- Mare and Sleep Disorders in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and ‘Introduction’ (1831), Mathilde Giret; Chapter 9. Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare(s) in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Fabien Desset; PART IV. BEYOND FRANKENSTEIN; Chapter 10. Dreaming Up Monsters: The Affective Intensity of Dreams, Nightmares and Delirium in Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, Anne Nagel; Chapter 11. ‘And This Shall Be My Dream Tonight’: Dream as Narrative in Wuthering Heights, Tricia Ayrton; Chapter 12. Dreams in Jane Eyre, Isabelle Hervouet; Postscript: A Jigsaw of Dreams, Margaret Anne Doody; Index.