William V. Harris

This cultural history project consists of several interlocking studies of the distinctive ways in which dreams were represented and understood in the classical Greek and Roman world. Its basis lies in ancient texts and monuments, but also in contemporary science about dreams, and to some extent in the ways in which other historical cultures (such as those of the European Middle Ages) have faced their dreaming-experience. I examine some of the thought patterns of a world that is familiar, but as far as dreams are concerned very unfamiliar.