Dreams, Boundaries and the Twelfth Century Renaissance

This thesis is concerned with attitudes to dreaming in the Twelfth Century Renaissance insofar as they reflect changes in the definition and interaction of the terms female /male, private/public, spirit /matter, sacred/profane. It argues that whereas in the early Middle Ages only a restricted set of culture-pattern dreams were considered relevant, the twelfth century saw an upsurge of interest in the phenomenon of dreaming because it was relevant to the conceptualisation of changing boundaries, and because these changes affected social categories associated with dreaming. In the process, dreaming became associated with the personal, the female and the spiritual, and as such was excluded from the social