Dreams in Late Antiquity (eBook)

Studies in the Imagination of a Culture

Patricia Cox Miller (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF

2020
288 Seiten
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-21585-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Dream interpretation was a prominent feature of the intellectual and imaginative world of late antiquity, for martyrs and magicians, philosophers and theologians, polytheists and monotheists alike. Finding it difficult to account for the prevalence of dream-divination, modern scholarship has often condemned it as a cultural weakness, a mass lapse into mere superstition. In this book, Patricia Cox Miller draws on pagan, Jewish, and Christian sources and modern semiotic theory to demonstrate the integral importance of dreams in late-antique thought and life. She argues that Graeco-Roman dream literature functioned as a language of signs that formed a personal and cultural pattern of imagination and gave tangible substance to ideas such as time, cosmic history, and the self. Miller first discusses late-antique theories of dreaming, with emphasis on theological, philosophical, and hermeneutical methods of deciphering dreams as well as the practical uses of dreams, especially in magic and the cult of Asclepius. She then considers the cases of six Graeco-Roman dreamers: Hermas, Perpetua, Aelius Aristides, Jerome, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianus. Her detailed readings illuminate the ways in which dreams provided solutions to ethical and religious problems, allowed for the reconfiguration of gender and identity, provided occasions for the articulation of ethical ideas, and altogether served as a means of making sense and order of the world.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 4.8.2020
• Reihe/Serie: Bollingen Series
• Reihe/Serie: Bollingen Series
• Reihe/Serie: Bollingen Series (General)
• Reihe/Serie: Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology
• Reihe/Serie: Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte / Antike
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften
• Schlagworte: Aelius Aristides • Allegory • Allusion • Ambiguity • Anecdote • Angels • Apuleius • artemidorus • Asceticism • Asclepius • Augustine • Berakoth • Binarism • Catarrh • Catechumen • chastity • Christ • Christian Apologetics • Christianity • Christian theology • Cicero • Clement of Alexandria • Conscience • Consciousness • daemons • deity • Demons • Disease • Divination • divine inspiration • double-mindedness • Dream Interpretation • Eloquence • enupnion • Epilepsy • Eros • Eustochium • evocation • Exegesis • Explanation • Fasting • fate • Feeling • Galen • Gates of horn and ivory • God • Greek Magical Papyri • Gregory of Nyssa • Handbook • Hans Dieter Betz • Hermas • hermeneutics • Homer • Imagery • Imagination • Incubation • Indication (medicine) • irenaeus • Irony • Italo Calvino • Jerome • Julia Kristeva • Late Antiquity • Leitmotif • Literature • Lucian of Samosata • Macrobius • martyr • Masculinity • Medicine • Metaphor • Mithraism • Montanism • narrative • Neoplatonism • Nihilism • oneiros • Oracle • Origen • Ovid • parable • Pausanias • Penelope • phenomenon • Philosopher • Philostratus • Physiognomy • Plotinus • Plutarch • Poetry • Polytheism • Porphyry • potion • precognition • Prediction • Prophecy • recitation • Religion • religious text • rhetoric • ridicule • Rite • Selene • self-awareness • self-concept • Semiotics • sensibility • Socrates • Sophist • Suffering • Suggestion • Symptom • Synesius • syracuse university • Tertullian • Thecla, St. • Theology • theory • The Other Hand • therapeutic effect • The Various • Thought • Tractate • treatise • Uncertainty • Understanding • Virgil • virginity • Visio • Vomiting • Votive offering • wendell berry • Writing
• ISBN-10: 0-691-21585-5 / 0691215855
• ISBN-13: 978-0-691-21585-3 / 9780691215853