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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[Review length: 816 words • Review posted on December 1, 2009]