Abstract:

Accepted as one of the major elements of psychoanalysis, which explains the subconscious thoughts, dreams have an important place in literature. In ancient times, dreams were oracles deriving from God, a divine voice, or the soul’s journey towards different worlds while the body was sleeping (Yücesoy, 2001: 74-75). In modern periods, due to the studies of psychoanalysts as Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, the causes, interpretations, and functions of dreams became more accurate and acceptable. Frequently observed in literary works, as a motif, “dreams” have many aims. Dream motif is foregrounded in stylistic analyses and is interpreted as foreshadowing or God’s warning, inner journey or reflection of subconsciousness, and the aesthetic device used by the writer to convey the messages to the readers. “Dream,” used in psychoanalysis to comprehend an individual’s psychological state, provides the interpretation of texts in terms of cohesion and context. This study examines the “dream” motif in significant literary works in world literature within Comparative Literary Analysis. Within this scope, the “dream” motif in certain literary texts is explained following the psychoanalytical discourse of dreams by Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. The first part of the study involves “dream” and its functions in literature. In the second part, the dream motif is comparatively analyzed via samples from the world literature. Nathaniel Hawthrone’s story, “The Birthmark”, David Herbert Lawrence’s novella The Fox, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s novel Aydaki Kadın (The Woman in the Moon) and short story “Rüyalar” (“Dreams”), Charles Dickens’s story “A Christmas Carol”, Anton Chekhov’s short story “The Shoemaker and the Devil” and Halide Edip Adıvar’s novel Handan constitute the analysis part. The study concludes that “dream” has many functions as a motif and is vastly preferred by writers for various purposes in different cultures.

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