Olga Colbert

Literature consistently explores human consciousness, exposing gaps in scientific knowledge, questioning consensus reality, and at times even suggesting paths of future research for the scientific community. Dreams in literary works serve different purposes: from exploring the inner worlds of fictional characters to a narrative ploy that invalidates the odd view of reality suggested by the previous plot line. However, some texts engage in a nuanced examination of the dreaming experience and in the process deeply probe into the nature of reality. These are the texts that constitute the object of this study. From Cervantes’ Don Quijote and Calderón de la Barca’s Life is a Dream, to contemporary authors like Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges, Juan José Millás, and Carmen Martín Gaite. Their texts explore dreaming, lucid dreaming, OBEs, the experiences of falling asleep (hypnagogia) and waking up from sleep (hypnopompia) and include parasomnias like nightmares and sleep paralysis. Methodologically, I approach this study as the intersection of literary texts and scientific research on sleep and dreaming. I draw on the canonical works of Stephen LaBerge on lucid dreaming and OBEs, and William Dement and J. Allan Hobson’ studies on sleep science, as well as recent research in the field of cognitive neuroscience (J.F. Pagel, Giulio Tononi, Matthew Walker, etc.). The study of scientific sources is placed side by side to sophisticated textual analyses of literary texts.

Olga Colbert is Associate Professor of Spanish in Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and is the author of multiple articles on Spanish literature and culture. Her book, The Gaze on the Past: Popular Culture and History in Antonio Muñoz Molina’s Novels was published by Bucknell University Press in 2007. Her research interests include cognitive approaches to literature, ecocriticism, gender studies, and historical discourses. She is currently working on a book on the representation of states of consciousness in literary fiction.