{"id":3242,"date":"2014-12-18T16:15:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T16:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/?page_id=3242"},"modified":"2014-12-18T16:15:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T16:15:07","slug":"drettas-2012-congress","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/abstracts\/drettas-2012-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"Drettas (2012 Congress)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Dimitri Drettas<br \/>\n(<em>Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l&#8217;Asie Orientale, Paris<\/em>)<br \/>\n&#8220;Classified Dreams:\u00a0 Oneirocritical Manuscripts from Dunhuang and the Mantic Culture of Medieval China&#8221;<\/h3>\n<p>Abstract of Paper Presented at the 47th International Medieval Congress (Kalamazoo, 2012)<br \/>\nSession on <strong>&#8220;Dream Books&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>\nCo-sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and the Societas Magica<br \/>\nOrganized by <strong>L\u00e1szl\u00f3 S\u00e1ndor Chardonnens<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/2012-international-congress-on-medieval-studies\/\"><strong>2012 Congress<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This paper presents the extant manuscript evidence of the literary component of dream divination in medieval China, and considers several hypotheses about the possible uses of these documents under the late Tang and early Song dynasties.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the fourteen manuscripts hosting dream prognostics books have been found among the myriad of written and painted items stored in the famous \u201ccave number 17\u201d of Dunhuang (Gansu, China), which was sealed at the beginning of the 11<sup>th<\/sup> century. \u00a0There are fifteen separate texts inscribed on fragmentary paper scrolls, and, in three cases, booklets, one of which (Paris, Biblioth\u00e8que nationale de France, Pelliot chinois 3908) has been entirely preserved. \u00a0The formal features of the contents (namely the rigorous syntax of the entries, which link selected dream images to prognostics and are always classified by thematic rubrics) lead to a working definition of <em>oneirocritique<\/em> as a specialized genre of mantic literature, to be distinguished from other forms, like historical accounts and poems, where dreams also have a significant part.<\/p>\n<p>There is no assignable testimony about the actual use of such items by diviners or laypersons. \u00a0This requires taking into account, not only the conditions of the production and transmission of the manuscripts, but also their nature as objects pertaining to the material culture of medieval Chinese society. \u00a0In order to efficiently replace these books in the context of religious, magica, and divinatory practes of the 9<sup>th<\/sup>\u201310<sup>th<\/sup> centuries, attention has to be paid to the interactions between the oneirocritical content and the other texts often copied on the same codicological unit. \u00a0In addition to the comparison with the printed descendants of this corpus, the recent discovery of a 3<sup>rd<\/sup> century BCE bamboo manuscript sheds new light on the evolution of the genre.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dimitri Drettas (Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l&#8217;Asie Orientale, Paris) &#8220;Classified Dreams:\u00a0 Oneirocritical Manuscripts from Dunhuang and the Mantic Culture of Medieval China&#8221; Abstract of Paper Presented at the 47th International Medieval Congress (Kalamazoo, 2012) Session on &#8220;Dream Books&#8221; Co-sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and the Societas Magica Organized by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1023,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3243,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3242\/revisions\/3243"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manuscriptevidence.org\/wpme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}