Dream, Creativity, and Madness in Nineteenth-Century France

by Tony James

Overview

Those wishing to know the nature of madness, wrote Voltaire, should observe their dreams. This is an important new analysis of the problematic relationship between dreams and madness that preoccupied nineteenth-century French writers, thinkers, and doctors. Tony James shows how doctors (such as Esquirol, Lélut, and Janet), thinkers (including Maine de Biran and Taine), and writers (Balzac, Nerval, Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, and Rimbaud) grappled in very different ways with the problems raised by the so-called "phenomena of sleep" and particularly the question: might dreams be a source of creativity?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198151883
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/25/1996
Pages:	316
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.50(h) x 0.92(d)
Lexile:	1480L (what's this?)