Resumen de Dreams and Visions in the Early Middle Ages: The Reception and Use of Patristic Ideas, 400–900 by Jesse Keskiaho (review)
Of equal importance is that, alongside the manuscript tradition of the relevant writings, the book addresses hagiography as a recontextualization of earlier patristic views within new historical and cultural contexts. [...]it presents hagiography as a process of reception and popularization of patristic ideas. A discussion of dreams involved ideas about saints, angels, the ordinary dead, afterlife, the biblical tradition, religious images, the soul, orthopraxy and sanctity, among other things” (221). The discrepancy between the two statements could have been easily avoided had the author appropriated the contemporary concept of “integral dreaming,” which presupposes a holistic framework where dreams and visions are as much a part of one’s personal rapport with reality as any other.
