Myth and Dream / The Dreaming of Myth

A two-day conference (23 and 24 May 2019) in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, at the University of Bologna

Immemorially, myths and dreams have been closely associated as wellsprings for fantasy and the imagination. The pairing of myth and dream reaches far back into antiquity, to the story of Gilgamesh in the Middle East, to the epics of Homer and Virgil in Europe, and to the Dream Time of Australian aborigines. In the modern era, psychoanalytic theories have drawn freely upon mythic accounts and archetypal images in interpreting dreams and plumbing the depths of the unconscious mind, while artists of the surreal and symbolist painters have revelled in the transformations and displacements that recourse to the world of myth and dream affords. Jane Harrison encapsulated the association between the two when at the beginning of the twentieth century she wrote that ‘myth is the dream-thinking of a people, just as the dream is the myth of the individual’.

The conference invites proposals addressing diverse approaches to the combination of myth and dream – literary, artistic, scientific or theological – that enjoy attention in the contemporary world. 

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Animals
Archetypes
Biblical accounts
Celestial realms
Children
Death
Divine phenomena
Dreamer as hero(ine)
Dreams of other worlds
Eros
Folktales
Gates of ivory and horn
Gods of dreaming
Illustrations
Immortality
Initiation
Interpretations
Invisibility
Labyrinths
Legends
Mandalas
Monads and dyads
Monsters
Mythical realism
Nightmares
Oneiromancy
Portals
Prophecy
Sagas
Shamanic possession
Soul sleep
Succubus and incubus
Surrealism
Time and timelessness
Underworlds
Visitations
Voids
Wishes and desires
Yin and yang

The languages of the conference will be Italian and English.      

Papers should be 20 minutes long. Please send proposals of 250 words (in Italian or English) to lilec.mythdream@unibo.it  by 1 February 2019.