The poetics of dreams
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Freer, Alexander
Abstract
The Interpretation of Dreams provided the central model for psychoanalytic literary criticism, and has generally been understood to offer a model of surface and depth, in which the function of criticism is to reveal or ‘decode’ latent and unconscious content. For this reason Freudian literary reading is most closely associated to a ‘deep’ or ‘suspicious’ hermeneutics of surface and depth. Yet the Interpretation also contains a second account of interpretation, premised on association, which conceives of dreams as if they were poems, rather than symptoms. This strain of associative interpretation in Freud’s writing on dreams suggests a latent, ‘negative’ theory of aesthetics.
Description
Keywords
47 Language, Communication and Culture, 4702 Cultural Studies, 4705 Literary Studies
Journal Title
Critical Quarterly
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0011-1562
1467-8705
1467-8705
Volume Title
61
Publisher
Wiley