[ilds] Great Tonal Register of Historical Dreams

[slighcl]

On 11/19/2007 11:34 AM, James Gifford wrote:

> Perhaps we should be most struck by the fact that Darley does not dream 
> in _Justine_, even though he's the one engaged in the Freudian "talk" of 
> that first epigram...
Good observation.  But who dreams Cohen's fever dreams about Melissa on 
the lake?  (Darley certainly had no transcript for those magnificent 
visions.)  And who moves the tonal register into a dream-lyric when 
relating Scobie's memories of his brother's fall from the Falls?  I do 
not see the old furrier or the old pirate as capable of that sort of 
tonal and stylistic finesse.  So I tend to imagine Darley working like a 
spiritualist medium with the memories and the relics and the texts left 
behind by others.

C&c.

-- 
**********************
Charles L. Sligh
Department of English
Wake Forest University
slighcl at wfu.edu
**********************