Abstract
Charles Dickens outlined a variety of manifestations of sleep and its disturbances, which were presumably related to his own and those of family and friends, also expressed in some of his characters. There are many reports of the dream-reality confusion through the anguished young Oliver Twist, the protagonist of the book of the same name. The virtual world of dreams is important for Dickens’ narrative structure, especially in the experiences of Oliver Twist, as well as in the lively, and extensive perceptions with many scenarios of Ebenezer Scrooge, an old miser, from the book Carol Night. Consequently, dreams fulfill the gap between sleep and conscious cognition, and they are oneiric conceptions that are reported in young and old. Furthermore, it seems that Dickens used sleep, usually hypnagogia, perhaps REM lucid dreaming, as a creative work process, as is more easily seen in narcoleptics, besides he expressed these phenomena in his characters. The present study refers to some reports of Dickens’ characters through the current view of sleep and dreams neurobiology.
Highlights
Charles Dickens was a prolific and ingenious 19th-century English writer who died just over 150 years ago, in 1870
The virtual dream world was central to Dickens’ narrative structure and was fundamental to his work process, social engagement, and fantasy, as we can infer from Winyard and Furneaux (2010): “For Dickens, fundamental emotional and social bonds are formed between different classes and peoples by creating sympathy through imagination,” and “For Dickens, science should excite, rather than reductively explain, imagination and the bonds that forge it between people.”
rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and dreams are linked even more to creativity (Llewellyn and Desseilles, 2017). This association was reinforced by the Franco-Italian study of patients with narcolepsy, characterized by falling asleep directly in REM sleep and, among several symptoms, a high frequency of dream recall and lucid dreams, when a person becomes aware that he is dreaming while remaining physiologically asleep and immersed in a dream (Yu and Shen, 2020; Mota-Rolim et al, 2021)
Summary
Charles Dickens was a prolific and ingenious 19th-century English writer who died just over 150 years ago, in 1870. REM sleep and dreams are linked even more to creativity (Llewellyn and Desseilles, 2017) This association was reinforced by the Franco-Italian study of patients with narcolepsy, characterized by falling asleep directly in REM sleep and, among several symptoms, a high frequency of dream recall and lucid dreams, when a person becomes aware that he is dreaming while remaining physiologically asleep and immersed in a dream (Yu and Shen, 2020; Mota-Rolim et al, 2021). The biological approach to his work, which is the main objective of this article, is unusual
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