Helen Groth Books

This groundbreaking study is a history of the dream as a fundamental aspect of identity and culture from the mid-nineteenth century, to the late twentieth century. Drawing on a complex and diverse archive, including popular dream books, lectures, novels, poems, visual media, diaries, letters, scholarly texts, and newspaper and journal articles, Dreams and Modernity analyses how the explosion of interest in dreams informed the psychic, imaginative and intimate life of the modern subject. The unauthorized nature of dream material and its formulation as a "history from below" makes it singularly illuminating for a broader cultural history of this period.

In the last few decades, literary critics have increasingly drawn insights from cognitive neuroscience to deepen and clarify our understanding of literary representations of mind. This cognitive turn has been equally generative and contentious. While cognitive literary studies has reinforced how central the concept of mind is to aesthetic practice from the classical period to the present, critics have questioned its literalism and selective borrowing of scientific authority. Mindful Aesthetics presents both these perspectives as part of a broader consideration of the ongoing and vital importance of shifting concepts of mind to both literary and critical practice. This collection contributes to the forging of a ‘new interdisciplinarity,' to paraphrase Alan Richardson's recent preface to the Neural Sublime, that is more concerned with addressing how, rather than why, we should navigate the increasingly narrow gap between the humanities and the sciences.

Focusing on dreams as a key element of identity and culture, this study spans from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century. It utilizes a diverse range of sources, including literature, visual media, and personal writings, to explore how the fascination with dreams shaped the inner lives of individuals during modernity. By presenting a "history from below," it offers unique insights into the cultural significance of dreams and their impact on the psyche and imagination of the era.