Renaissance Dream Cultures

Alessandro Arcangeli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032246710
• eBook ISBN: 9781040108086
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

This volume explores the dream cultures of the European long sixteenth century, with a focus on Italian sources, reflections and debates on the nature and value of dreams, and frameworks of interpretation.

The chapters examine a variety of oneiric experiences, since distinctions such as that between dreams and visions are themselves culturally specific and variable. Several developments of the period are relevant and consequently considered, from the introduction of the printing press and the humanist rediscovery of ancient texts to the religious reforms and the cultural encounters at the time of the first globalisation. At the centre of the narrative is the exceptional case of Girolamo Cardano, heterodox physician, mathematician, astrologer, autobiographer, dreamer and key dream theorist of the epoch. The Italian peninsula produced the first printed editions of many classical and medieval treatises, and, particularly between the 1560s and the 1610s, was also especially active in the writing of texts, both Latin and vernacular, fascinated by the oneiric experience and investigating it. Given the role of the visual in dreaming, images are also analysed.

This book will be a recommended reading for scholars, students and non-specialist readers of cultural history, Renaissance studies and dream cultures.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Appreciation
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Approaching the historical study of dreams
• 2 Themes
• 3 Les mots et les choses (an intermezzo on vocabulary)
• 4 Contexts
• 5 Recovering and negotiating a long tradition
• 6 Girolamo Cardano, the dreaming scholar
• 7 The sixteenth-century treatise on dreams: A quasi-genre
• 8 A selection of sources on Renaissance dream cultures
• 9 A look at images
• 10 Fragments towards a grand narrative
• 11 The development of the studies in historical dream cultures
• 12 A Coda on the oneiric present
• Appendix
• Table of most notable topics
• Bibliography
• Index