Charles Dickens' Hypnagogia, Dreams, and Creativity
Marleide da Mota Gomes, Antonio E Nardi
Frontiers in Psychology July 27, 2021 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.700882 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Charles Dickens's literary characters, specifically Oliver Twist and Ebenezer Scrooge |
| Topics | Dreaming Lucid dreaming |
| Keywords | Rem sleep Creativity |
| Key points | Argues that Dickens used hypnagogia and possibly REM lucid dreaming as a creative work process, and that he expressed these phenomena in his characters, such as Oliver Twist and Ebenezer Scrooge, reflecting his own and his family's sleep experiences. |
Abstract
Charles Dickens outlined a variety of manifestations of sleep and its disturbances, which were presumably related to his own and those of family and friends, also expressed in some of his characters. There are many reports of the dream-reality confusion through the anguished young Oliver Twist, the protagonist of the book of the same name. The virtual world of dreams is important for Dickens’ narrative structure, especially in the experiences of Oliver Twist, as well as in the lively, and extensive perceptions with many scenarios of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser, from the book Carol Night. Consequently, dreams fulfill the gap between sleep and conscious cognition, and they are oneiric conceptions that are reported in young and old. Furthermore, it seems that Dickens used sleep, usually hypnagogia, perhaps REM lucid dreaming, as a creative work process, as is more easily seen in narcoleptics, besides he expressed these phenomena in his characters. The present study refers to some reports of Dickens’ characters through the current view of sleep and dreams neurobiology.
Comparable studies
Other theoretical and historical papers on dreaming, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dreaming: a conceptual framework for philosophy of mind and empirical research | 2016 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Metaphor and hyperassociativity: the imagination mechanisms behind emotion assimilation in sleep and dreaming | 2015 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience | 2000 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Experimental Research on Dreaming: State of the Art and Neuropsychoanalytic Perspectives | 2011 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The Neurobiology of Consciousness: Lucid Dreaming Wakes Up | 2009 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 2
Cites 8
- Increased creative thinking in narcolepsy. Brain July 1, 2019
- Investigation on Neurobiological Mechanisms of Dreaming in the New Decade Brain Sciences February 11, 2021
- Bizarreness of Lucid and Non-lucid Dream: Effects of Metacognition. Frontiers in Psychology 2019
- Dreams and Dissociation—Commonalities as a Basis for Future Research and Clinical Innovations Frontiers in Psychology April 22, 2020
- Dissociative states in dreams and brain chaos: implications for creative awareness Frontiers in Psychology September 7, 2015
and 3 more in the library