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Chapter 25 - Dreams

from Part V - Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2021

Angus Cleghorn
Affiliation:
Seneca College, Canada
Jonathan Ellis
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Summary

Dreams provided Bishop with a creative resource, a motif, a model, and a literary device in her work, exceeding the contexts of surrealism, psychoanalysis and autobiography in which they have been discussed. While the word “dream” and its variants turn up repeatedly in Bishop’s work, her usage and attitude vary. I argue that dreams in Bishop might best be understood within a literary/aesthetic or cognitive/phenomenological lens. Furthermore, symbolist practices are as pertinent to Bishop’s dream poetry as surrealist practices. This essay explores the nature of “dreaming” in Bishop as a poetic resource, a phenomenal experience and paradigm of imaginative activity. And, quite differently, I acknowledge Bishop’s ambivalence about dreams as a literary device and, more broadly, as a general pursuit of illusions with often precarious personal and social implications.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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