May be of interest to some.

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Subject: [JFRR] Dreambooks in Byzantium: Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with Commentary and Introduction (Oberhelman, Steven M.)

Dreambooks in Byzantium: Six Oneirocritica in Translation, with
Commentary and Introduction. By Steven M. Oberhelman. 2008.
Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing. 260 pages. ISBN:
978-0-7546-6084-2 (hard cover).

Reviewed by William Hansen, Indiana University ([log in to unmask]).

[Word count: 816 words]

Handbooks of dream interpretation are one of the oldest forms of
practical literature. Examples survive from antiquity (Mesopotamia,
Egypt, and Greece), many more are attested from the medieval period,
both in the Latin west and in the Greek east, and thereafter they
become too numerous to count. Most of them take the form of
dictionaries, featuring motifs of dream content arranged
alphabetically, each item followed by an explanation of what the
dream portends for the dreamer. So, for example, in his The Meaning
of Your Dreams (New York, 1962) the late "astrologist, palmist,
handwriting analyst, and interpreter of dreams" Franklin D. Martini
interprets "fall" as follows: "To dream that you are falling from a
high place, and are much frightened in the flight, but sustain no
injuries, denotes that you will overcome some obstacle that is
hindering you now. To suffer injuries would signify obstacles that
would go from bad to worse." As this example suggests, dreambooks
belong nowadays mostly or exclusively to the realm of popular
literature; however, for most of their history, which amounts to some
four thousand years, readers of dreambooks have included learned
persons as well as the political and social elite.

Dreambooks rest upon the old and widespread belief that most dreams
are messages foretelling future events, and that the messages are
usually symbolic rather than straightforward, for which reason they
must be interpreted in order to be understood properly. In the volume
under review, Steven M. Oberhelman translates into English six Greek
dreambooks (oneirocritica) composed during the Byzantine period (AD
330-1453). They are The Dreambook of the Holy Prophet Daniel with the
Help of Holy God; The Dreambook of Nicephorus, Patriarch of
Constantinople; The Dreambook of Astrampsychus; The Dreambook of
Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople; Anonymous, An Additional
Dreambook Drawn from the Experience of the Wise; and The Dreambook of
Manuel II Palaeologus. The translator furnishes the texts with
helpful notes, elucidating Byzantine cultural matters, commenting
upon philological problems, and comparing interpretations of the same
dream-content in different dreambooks. For example, whereas The
Dreambook of the Holy Prophet Daniel declares that "Bathing in a
river signifies distress," another says that it signifies "joy," a
third makes the meaning of the dream depend upon whether the bather
crosses the stream or not, and a fourth interprets the dream as being
positive or negative depending upon the clarity of the water.
Dreambooks in Byzantium begins with three introductory essays that
contextualize the six translated dream handbooks, and concludes with
a rich bibliography and an index of dream symbols. For
non-philologists a difficulty in the book may be that the author
assumes in his readers a general competence in foreign languages and
so gives many citations from Greek, Latin, Italian, and other
languages in the original.

The earliest and most important of the six dreambooks is that
attributed (falsely, of course) to the Hebrew prophet Daniel. Dating
probably to the fourth century AD, the Greek work was translated into
Latin as the Somniale Danielis and from Latin into many vernacular
languages. It was a basic source for other medieval dreambooks and
for subsequent European dreambooks. The remaining five dreambooks are
later productions. Some are in prose, some are in verse, and one is a
mix. Except for the anonymous dreambook, the works claim authority
and prestige by their attribution to or association with different
prominent figures -- a Hebrew prophet, Byzantine patriarchs, a
Persian magus, a Byzantine emperor.

Although the six handbooks offer no theoretical discussion on the
interpretation of dreams, their methodology is to some extent
transparent. Most of the interpretations imply one or more of five
processes. (1) Traditional cultural ideas. For example, a dream of a
man plying a loom signifies that the dreamer will commit adultery:
sexual intercourse, because the activity of plying the loom is
suggestive of sexual activity (see Analogy or Metaphor, below), and
adultery, because a man's plying the loom is, like adulterous sex,
contrary to custom. (2) Wordplay. "If you dream of becoming old
[geron], you will have privilege [geras]." (3) Antinomy. "Laughing in
a dream signifies grief." (4) Analogy (metonymy). A dream about fish
means fear and lack of resolve, since fish are easily frightened.
Similarly, large trees signify noble men, containers signify women,
and so on. (5) Metaphor. Riding a horse means sexual intercourse. But
some interpretations remain puzzling, such as that a dream of eating
hot pita bread means that the dreamer will die of consumption, and
Oberhelman reasonably speculates that some entries may be based upon
actual experiences. Apart from such apparently arbitrary
significations, the strangest interpretations are doubtless those in
which the dream portends the opposite of its manifest content.

Oberhelman's Dreambooks in Byzantium is a worthwhile read for
folklorists interested in folk belief, divination, or medieval
folklore. The existence of dream handbooks also raises the question,
apparently little investigated, of the relationship of such books to
unwritten traditions of dream interpretation.

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