Dreams in the Novel. The Dream as mise-en-abîme in Jean Paul, Vladimir Nabokov, and W.G. Sebald

Abstract

This essay explores the function and aesthetics of dreams in novels from three different centuries which all present their characters against the backdrop of violent world events. The essay argues that the dreams in each novel pro-vide a cryptic mise-en-abîme of the novel’s trajectory, while allowing for hugely different oneiric geographies, moods, and conceptions of the relation-ship between the protagonists and the world events of their time. Jean Paul’s protagonist in Titan (1800–03) dreams a harmonious ending to a life journey in a sublime cosmos lit up by religious faith. The dream of Vladimir Na¬bo-kov’s V in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (1941) takes place in mundane interiors and lights up just a moment in his life, often with humour and wit. The dreams in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001) continue the Modernist no-tion of life without the sense of cosmic wholeness and fulfilment, but reject the space Nabokov’s novel had carved out for individuality among world events and return to the notion of the dream journey encompassing a whole age and the truth about it in a trajectory which reverses that of Jean Paul’s: dreams expressing destruction as ubiquitous.