Monday, December 25, 2023

Jean-Marie Husser on the Literary Function of Dream Accounts

  

5. The Literary Function of Dream Accounts

 

Dreams also appear to be a compositional technique particularly well suited to the structuring of a narrative text. They do so in the following two ways:

 

1. Integrated into the situation described at the outset, the dream henceforth serves as the common thread, unifying the different elements in the narrative and bringing it to its conclusion. The plot is developed between the dream, which forecasts the outcome, and its realization, expected at the end of whatever perepeteia the author cares to imagine. In this context, the dream takes on the role of an initial prophecy.

 

The Joseph story is the best biblical example of a story in which dreams have this narrative function: the short story runs from a crisis towards its resolution, even though the latter is announced from the start in Joseph's dreams (Gen. 37), which also play a part in the origin of the crisis. As regards the epic genre, Jacob's dream at Bethel (Gen. 28), set as it is against his struggle by night at the ford across the Jabbok (Gen. 32), has a similar structuring function in the Jacob cycle. These two events parallel each other symmetrically at two significant points in the cycle, and make the patriarch's coming and going into a veritable initiatory journey, extending from a promise to its realization, from the initial conflict between the twins to the exchange of a blessing, hard won.

 

2. Another way in which dreams may structure a text is by permitting and indeed provoking the symmetrical organization of the text. Organized around an axis corresponding to the awakening of the dreamer, the narrative takes the form of a diptych, the panels of which often mirror each other word for word: the scene experienced in the dream will be lived out again in the wakeful world, for the dream acts as an inital prophetic element or instruction given to the hero of the story. Keret's dream, in the first episode of the Ugaritic epic, illustrates this procedure.

 

Similarly, though in a different way, the account of the abduction of Sarah by Abimelech (Gen. 20), takes the form of two symmetrical scenes, one in a dream, the other after the king has woken up. These scenes contain dialogues that are not identical in content, but which pursue the same argument by in versing the situations. Different again, but still operating according to the same principle, is Jacob's dream at Bethel (Gen. 28). It provokes the repetition of gestures accomplished the evening before (v. 1 Ib) on awakening (v. 18), though with a significant reversal in the value of things and of place, a shift from the profane to the sacred.

 

In addition to having a structuring role, the dream account is a simple compositional technique whereby authors can introduce a dialogue between God and a human being. This oneiric dialogue may have some concrete end and be the opportunity for a direct intervention on the part of God in the evolution of the dreamer: it is thus that God comes to the aid of Keret (KTU 1.14) or of Jacob (Gen. 31), that he gives to Solomon (1 Kgs 3) or to Daniel (Dan. 2) the knowledge necessary for the accomplishment of their mission. But this dialogue may also be the form chosen in order to develop some aspect of teaching or for theological reflection. In this case, it provides the setting for a real debate, as in Genesis 20 between Abimelech and God, or the opportunity to underline certain theological principles at a key point in the story, as in Solomon's dream at Gibeon, for example. (Jean-Marie Husser, Dreams and Dream Narratives in the Biblical World [The Biblical Seminar 63; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999], 103-4)