Literary dream · People & kin
Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!
Oxford, England · 1865 (novel)
“Oh, I’ve had such a curious dream!” said Alice, and she told her sister, as well as she could remember them, all these strange Adventures of hers
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland — Lewis Carroll, 1865. Ch. XII
- Record type
- Literary dream
- Place
- Oxford, England · British
- Date
- 1865 (novel)
- Uncertainty
- Moderate
- Imagery
- Child · Animals · Garden
- Feelings
- Wonder · Joy
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Family members, friends and strangers populate most dreams. Freud read many such dreams as wishes in disguise; contemporary researchers emphasise continuity with waking relationships and concerns.
Freud, Dream Psychology (1920)
Mythological
Dreams in epic and scripture are often addressed to someone — a wife waiting for a husband, a son receiving a vision for his family — and are told aloud to be understood.
Odyssey XIX; Genesis 37
Chinese traditions
Confucius lamented that he no longer dreamed of the Duke of Zhou; in Chinese letters, dreaming of someone is a measure of how much they are on one’s mind.
Analects 7.5
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- A damson with a snail inside England · before 1911
- The animals fell out of Noah’s ark Zurich, Switzerland · c. 1910
- Bottom’s dream, which hath no bottom Athens (setting) · c. 1595 (play)
- Planting fowls’ heads to grow chickens England · before 1911
- Riding with Achilles Vienna, Austria · c. 1900
- Strawberries, huckleberries, omelette Vienna, Austria · c. 1897