Coleridge on Dreaming Romanticism, Dreams and the Medical Imagination [Paperback]

Explores Coleridge's writings on dreams and contemporary poetic, philosophical and scientific debates on the subject.This book is the first investigation of Coleridge's responses to his dreams and to debates on the nature of dreaming, amongst poets, philosophers and scientists in the Romantic period. Coleridge wrote and read extensively on the subject, but his diverse and original ideas have hitherto received little attention. Avoiding purely biographical or psychoanalytic approaches, Jennifer Ford reveals instead a rich historical context for the ways in which the most mysterious workings of the Romantic imagination were explored and understood.This book is the first investigation of Coleridge's responses to his dreams and to debates on the nature of dreaming, amongst poets, philosophers and scientists in the Romantic period. Coleridge wrote and read extensively on the subject, but his diverse and original ideas have hitherto received little attention. Avoiding purely biographical or psychoanalytic approaches, Jennifer Ford reveals instead a rich historical context for the ways in which the most mysterious workings of the Romantic imagination were explored and understood.This book is the first investigation of Coleridge's responses to his dreams and to debates on the nature of dreaming among poets, philosophers and scientists in the Romantic period. Coleridge wrote and read extensively on the subject, but his diverse and original ideas have hitherto received little attention. Avoiding purely biographical or psychoanalytic approaches, Jennifer Ford reveals instead a rich historical context for the ways in which the most mysterious workings of the Romantic imagination were explored and understood.Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Editorial symbols used in manuscript and published notebooks; Introduction; 1. Dreaming in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; 2. Dramatic dreaming spaces; 3. The language of dreams; 4. Genera and species of dreams; 5. Nightmareslz