Kelly Bulkeley. Lucrecia the Dreamer: Prophecy, Cognitive Science, and the Spanish Inquisition. Stanford University Press, 2018. (Continued from my post of two weeks ago.) At the end of our last installment, we left Lucrecia de León in the prisons of the Spanish Inquisition with her newborn … [Read more...]
“Lucrecia the Dreamer” and the Spanish Inquisition – Kelly Bulkeley’s New Book on Dreams (Part 1)
Kelly Bulkeley. Lucrecia the Dreamer: Prophecy, Cognitive Science, and the Spanish Inquisition. Stanford University Press, 2018. Dreams. Animals have them. Humankind's oldest stories talk about them. In your dreams! we say, or, beyond my wildest dreams, validating with our speech habits … [Read more...]
Prophetic Dreams – Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, and “Blackhawk” Comics (Part 3)
(This is a continuation of last week's post.) The Freudian idea of dreams, in a nutshell: The essence of the dream is wish-fulfillment. As transient dwellers in a world not exactly designed for our individual satisfactions, each of us is bound to harbor a host of intense and vital wishes, … [Read more...]
Prophetic Dreams – Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, and “Blackhawk” Comics (Part 2)
I posted last week about Mark Twain's precognitive dream of his brother's death. This week I'll talk about my own prophetic dream--the one I had when I was 9 years old, or possibly 10. Of a "Blackhawk" comic book. Remember "Blackhawk"? If you're younger than about 55, you almost certainly … [Read more...]
Prophetic Dreams – Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud, and “Blackhawk” Comics (Part 1)
In 1858, Mark Twain had a prophetic dream of the death of his brother. In 1958, or possibly a year or so earlier, I experienced a prophetic dream of my own, on a subject vastly more banal. Specifically, a full-page panel of a "Blackhawk" comic book. Samuel Clemens--Twain's original name--was a … [Read more...]
