Dreams frighten and attract us because of their otherness, their manifold deviations from the world we know when we are awake. One of the most consistently used techniques of coming to terms with this otherness has been the attempt to make sense of dreams, to consider and portray them as messages which can and have to be deciphered. On the other hand (and much more rarely), dreams have been considered as a welcome source of entertainment, or as a key instrument to expand the limitations of a rational and conventional world view. This book analyses aspects of this dialectic in factual dream reports and in fictional representations of the dream in literature, film, music, and painting. Examples are taken from a great variety of cultures and historical periods. Their authors and artists include: Adorno, Agualusa, AndreasSalomé, Apollinaire, Artmann, Beckmann, Benjamin, Breton, Carroll, Carter, Diderot, Droste-Hülshoff, Flaubert, Goethe, Gondry, Grandville, Ji Yun, Johannot, Kafka, Keller, Klinger, Kubin, Li Gongzuo, Liu E, Ma Jian, Meyrink, Michaux, Minnelli, Montaigne, Mora, Ofenbauer, Okri, Oppenheim, Plath, Proust, Pushkin, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Scott, Seghers, Sorel, Soseki, Wagner, Walser, Wang Jian, Weiner, Wu Jianren, Yuan Mei, Zschokke, and many others.

Bernard Dieterle is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of Upper Alsace (France) and Guest Professor at University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). Manfred Engel is Professor of Modern German literature at Saarland University (Germany). Laura Vordermayer is postdoc researcher at Saarland University (Germany).