We all know what it is to dream, but we also know how difficult it is to describe or interpret dreams, or explain what they actually are. To attempt to articulate a dream is to realize how inadequate our words are to describe the experience. Dreams are beyond words, consisting of much more than what we can say about them.

In Dreamtelling, Pierre Sorlin does not deal with our nocturnal visions per se, but rather with what we say regarding them. He explores the influence of dreams on our imaginations, and the various – sometimes inconsistent, always imperfect – theories people have contrived to elucidate them. Sorlin shows how our accounts are built on recurrent patterns, but are also totally and entirely individual. He examines the urge to analyze night visions and why it is that some people have become experts in dream interpretation.

Many books have been published on the nature of dreams, on their psychological or biological origins and on their significance, but this book takes as its premise that all we can allege about nocturnal visions is based on dreamtelling. Sorlin shows how dreams arouse our creativity and how, in turn, our creativity influences our dream accounts. Dreamtelling is aimed at all those who not only dream, but are curious about the experience, and wonder why they feel compelled to analyze and recount their night visions.

Pierre Sorlin is Professor of Sociology in Audiovisual Media, University of Paris III, and author of European Cinemas, European Societies (1991), Mass Media (1994) and Italian National Cinema (1996).