“Theory and Practice of Experimental Writing”

“Theory and Practice of Experimental Writing”

The oneiric in literature is connected to various liminal states of characters and the artistic world: dreams, visions, hallucinations, altered states of consciousness, etc. Turning to dreams is a common device even in classical texts, but 20th-century writers offer new ways of working with them in literature. Authors not only describe dreams — they recreate their rhythm and imagery, incorporate dreams into reality, create texts where the boundary between the oneiric and the real is blurred (for example, Anna Kavan’s “whirl” method), or even catalogue them.