Dreams have been the focus of curiosity and analysis for thousands of years, but often from singular perspectives. In "A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination" (Zone Press), Elliot Wolfson explores the dream phenomena from a variety of academic disciplines.
Dreams have been the focus of curiosity and analysis for thousands of years, but often from singular perspectives. In A Dream Interpreted Within a Dream: Oneiropoiesis and the Prism of Imagination (Zone Books), Elliot Wolfson explores the oneiric phenomena from a variety of academic disciplines—psychoanalysis, phenomenology, literary theory, and neuroscience. Utilizing these different methodological approaches, Wolfson proposes a linguistic archaeology to elucidate the nature of the dream in a vast array of biblical, rabbinic, philosophical, and kabbalistic texts. By interpreting the dream within the dream, Wolfson articulates how a productive paradox emerges to reveal the wakeful character of the dream and the dreamful character of wakefulness.
Wolfson, the Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, has published extensively in the area of Jewish mysticism and philosophy in the medieval and modern eras. His books include: Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination; Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death; Venturing Beyond: Morality and Law in Kabbalistic Mysticism; and Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson.