Conceptions of Dreaming from Homer to 1800 traces the history of ideas about dreaming during the period when the admonitory dream was the main focus of learned interest—from the Homeric epics through the Renaissance—and the period when it began to become a secondary focus—the eighteenth century. The book also considers the two most important dream theorists at the turn of the twentieth century, Sigmund Freud and Sante de Sanctis. While Freud is concerned with questions of what a dream means and how to interpret it, de Sanctis offers a synthesis of nineteenth-century research into what a dream is and represents the Enlightenment transition from particular facts to general laws.

This volume explores the dream cultures of the European long sixteenth century, with a focus on Italian sources, reflections and debates on the nature and value of dreams, and frameworks of interpretation. The chapters examine a variety of oneiric experiences, since distinctions such as that between dreams and visions are themselves culturally specific and variable. Several developments of the period are relevant and consequently considered, from the introduction of the printing press and the humanist rediscovery of ancient texts to the religious reforms and the cultural encounters at the time of the first globalisation. At the centre of the narrative is the exceptional case of Girolamo Cardano, heterodox physician, mathematician, astrologer, autobiographer, dreamer and key dream theorist of the epoch. The Italian peninsula produced the first printed editions of many classical and medieval treatises, and, particularly between the 1560s and the 1610s, was also especially active in the writing of texts, both Latin and vernacular, fascinated by the oneiric experience and investigating it. Given the role of the visual in dreaming, images are also analysed. This book will be a recommended reading for scholars, students and non-specialist readers of cultural history, Renaissance studies and dream cultures.

Cockburn's biography of Lord Francis Jeffrey is the only publication about this infamous literary critic. Jeffrey was a founder of The Edinburgh Review and editor from 1803-1829. Cockburn provides us with a personal account of his friend and colleague that includes extracts from letters Jeffrey wrote that offer a fascinating insight into Scottish law, politics, literature and his deep affection for Scotland. First published in 1852, this book tells how Lord Jeffrey came to be the most influential critic of his time and a man who turned the world of literary criticism upside-down. He famously criticised Wordsworth and Coleridge and one review even lead to him meeting for a duel with Thomas Moore. He was not always a harsh critic however; he enjoyed Keats and Byron and towards the end of his life he became a great admirer and close friend of Charles Dickens. As a Scottish reformist he openly supported the Whigs through the pages of The Edinburgh Review. He was well educated and had a successful career in law, which eventually led to his appointment as Lord Advocate of Scotland. Everyone interested in Scottish history, politics. Law, literary reviews and life during the early 19th Century will find this book intriguing. About the Author Henry Thomas Cockburn (1779-1854), Solicitor General for Scotland, was educated at Edinburgh University. As member of the Speculative Society he mixed with fellow eminent Scotsmen, Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham and Lord Francis Jeffrey. In 1834 he took his seat as a judge in the Court of Session and the title of Lord Cockburn. Volume II (ISBN 1-904995-01-2) is also available. It contains over two hundred letters that Jeffrey sent to prominent politicians, authors, lawyers as well as close friends.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.