Dreaming across Boundaries The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands by Louise Marlow, ed. (Boston: Ilex Press and Washington: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2008. 301 pages.)

Abstract

Edited by Louise Marlow, this anthology consists of twelve articles on the
history of dreams and their interpretation in an array of historical Muslim
settings. A number of well-known hadiths support the idea of Prophet
Muhammad communicating with Muslims through dreams, and earlier
books and articles have established the existence of “a dominant, if not
entirely uncontested, tradition of [dream] interpretation” common to much
of the premodern Islamic world (p. 3). The articles address variations on this
core discourse specific to the cultural, sectarian, and disciplinary orientations of the original actors. Beyond this goal of discursive specificity,
Marlow notes two themes as having guided her selection: “the complex
process of translation whereby a personal visionary experience assumes the
form of a literary, narrative account accessible to, and subject to interpretation
by, an audience” (p. 9); and the “ways in which the leveling and potentially
subversive effects of dreams were countered by their integration into
hierarchical or normative systems” (p. 8). While the articles are arranged in
a roughly chronological order, they are considered here according to their
sociohistorical, literary, and intellectual-historical orientations ...