| Zusammenfassung: |
This dissertation examines how early modern Lutherans experienced, narrated and interpreted their dreams. Confessional controversies, political struggles, wars, and plagues left traces in Lutherans' dream images. Besides contemporary events, religion played central role in shaping individual's dreaming experiences. Between the 1530s and the 1730s, dreams were categorized according to their natural, divine, and demonic causes. Dreams that delivered divine messages provided consolation and guidance in difficult times. Meanwhile, ways of dealing with dreams reflected confessionalized knowledge and Lutheran identity. Moreover, different parties within the Lutheran church polemicized dreams in controversies. Lutheran pastors, professors, theological writers and other professionals took great interest in dreams. They recorded dreams in their letters, pastoral notes, diaries, writing calendars and autobiographies. The dreaming subjects underwent generational shift, and each generation faced different realities. Except for these "collective" aspects, there were personal concerns in Lutherans' dream narratives. Some Lutherans exchanged dreams as ways of building relationships. Others considered dreams as markers of life phases and of spiritual development
|
