Terrors of the Night
Essays on Art, Myth and Dreams
by Dr. Louise S. Milne
Terrors of the Night presents essays on the history of dreams and nightmares, in particular focusing on how these have been visualised; and how and why these visualisations change. Using the concept of dream-culture, the book explores dreams of fear and joy throughout history, examining their context in myth and lived experience through their imagery and their significance in art, literature, magic and religion.
Chapters deal with dreams among the Inuit, the night-riders of Renaissance Europe, the figure of the mermaid-siren, battle madness and shape-shifting, twentieth-century outsider artists and the invention of the modern nightmare, charms and curses from antiquity to the present day. The book draws on a wide range of perspectives from comparative mythology, anthropology, art history and critical theory, to show how people in different times and places have harnessed their dream-culture and used it to address challenges and threats in everyday life. Dream-culture in this sense is also seen as a creative arena, in close conjunction with the paradigms and media of visual art, folk culture and belief in the supernatural.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Introduction
On the Prehistory of Dreams
Chapter 1
Dreams of Fear and Joy Among the Inuit
Chapter 2
In the Country of Sleep: Night-Travellers, Myths and Dreams in Renaissance Europe
Chapter 3
Mermaids and Dreams in Visual Culture
Chapter 4
The Archaic and the Modern Nightmare
Chapter 5
A Storm in the Head: Animals, Dreams and Desire
Chapter 6
The Terrors of the Night: Charms Against the Nightmare and the Mythology of Dreams
Chapter 7
The Magic of Dreams and Nightmares: Charms, Spells, and Numerosity
Bibliography
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Full colour illustrations throughout.
Standard Hardcover Edition - Limited to 333 copies
392 pages. PPC cover with black print to front and spine. Head and tail bands.
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About the Author
Dr. Louise S. Milne is a visual anthropologist, a film-maker and a leading scholar in comparative mythology and the history of dreams. Born on Lewis, Dr. Milne studied at King's College Cambridge and Boston University, Mass. She has been working and teaching in Edinburgh since the mid-1990s, playing an instrumental role in the development of various undergraduate and graduate programmes, at Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh Napier University. Since 2015, she is Associate Professor of Film at Napier. Among her scholarly contributions is Carnivals & Dreams: Pieter Bruegel and the History of the Imagination, a comprehensive study on the 16th century artist, the research for which was funded by a Leverhulme Fellowship. A second fully revised edition, in preparation, has funding from the Carnegie and Scouloudi trusts.
Alongside her academic work, Dr. Milne makes experimental films and documentaries which are regularly selected and screened at several international film festivals. Appointed to the Board of the International Association of Comparative Mythology, she is also an editor of the Journal of Comparative Mythology, Chief Editor of Cosmos, and President of the Traditional Cosmology Society. She has represented the University at public events and festivals, and appeared as a BBC broadcaster.
