Nightmares in the Long Nineteenth Century

Synopsis

From Johann Heinrich Füssli’s 1781 oil painting The Nightmare, which was to become the iconic image of a newly emergent sensibility, to the first psychoanalytic studies culminating in “On the Nightmare” by Ernest Jones, first published in 1911, the long nineteenth century was characterised by a pervasive fascination with nightmares, both as frightening dreams and, in their personified form, evil spirits or monstrous creatures. This volume investigates the extensive and multifaceted presence of nightmares in the literature and culture of this period from a cross-disciplinary and cross-national perspective, shedding new light on the remarkably widespread nature of the nineteenth-century interest in nightmares as well as on common threads and features that inform and animate it. Its contributions by scholars from different fields reveal how nineteenth-century representations of nightmare, across and beyond Europe, explored fundamental questions about the limits of consciousness and reason, the complex interplay of body and mind, the elusive boundaries between self and other, and the dread of alterity, giving voice to deep-rooted fears and anxieties in a period when these notions were undergoing radical rethinking.

Copyright:

2025

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9783031811647

Related ISBNs:

9783031811630

Publisher:

Springer Nature Switzerland

Date of Addition:

04/11/25

Copyrighted By:

The Editor

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

History, Horror, Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts, Medicine

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Edited by:

Frances Clemente

Edited by:

Greta Colombani