Etudes Epistémè (Dec 2016)
Dream and Sensory Illusions in Seventeenth-century France
Abstract
What does the apparently simple phrase “sensorial illusion” mean in the case of dreams? What forms did the century of Calderón, Shakespeare and Descartes give to this illusion ? This essay offers a typology of the kinds of relations between dreams and sensory information that can be derived from the most widely-held conceptions in seventeenth century theoretical texts and literature. I will limit myself to four distinct cases : 1) the mirror relationship of reversibility between waking and dreaming, a sceptical motif which is powerfully illustrated in the history of philosophy by what has come to be known as « the argument of the dream »; this argument allows for a paradigmatic shift of all the sensations felt waking into a potential dream, and thus a shift from a feeling that « all is true » to « all is illusion ». 2) The second case deals, on the contrary, with a belief that there is a partial continuity between waking and dreaming, through the transference of the sensorial information garnered by the passions into the dream. This can be illustrated with the poet Gombauld, a member of the Académie française, who offers with L’Endimion (1624) an original interpretation of the myth of Endymion, the « perpetual sleeper » who derives from this continuity a lesson in the intrinsically imaginary nature of love. 3) The third case is again about a movement of transference, this time between daytime sensations marked by distortions induced by sensorial stimuli and night-time sensations through which the latter stimuli are amplified and « translated » into oneiric images. This hypothesis, first put forth by Aristotle, was repeatedly taken up when dealing with the issue of the integration of external sensations and the transformations of internal impressions. 4) The fourth one is the particular case of what the seventeenth century considers as « the active dreamer », or, under a coinage new in French in the seventeenth century, in English in the eighteenth century, the « somnabulist », who allows the observer to attend, as it were, an illusion of the dream projected outward and made visible through the somnambulist’s actions. This case will be illustrated by an anecdote retold by Bonaventure d’Argonne at the end of the century.
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