Vorstellungskraft und bewusstsein: die italienische traumdebatte zwischen dem 18. und 19. jahrhundert

In Enlightenment Europe, dreams have lost their divine and transcendent meaning, in view of a reduction of the powers traditionally assigned to thefac ty of the imagination. However, the relationship between mind, imagination and dreams is still a difficult issue to be resolved. If dreams maintain a heuristic function, this is gradually understood as the expression of a different plane of reality, in which the interconnection between imagination and reason, image and consciousness appears in a new way. From such a perspective, this paper examines the Italian debate about dreams between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries, on the basis of the positions of Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Francesco Soave and Pasquale Galluppi.