Ilana Pardes, Joseph and His Dreams: Bible, Literature, Psychoanalysis
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Dr. Marvin C. and Sharon A. Gerstein Distinguished Visiting Professor Lecture Series
Ilana Pardes (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Joseph and His Dreams: Bible, Literature, Psychoanalysis
Lecture 1: Dreams of Grandeur and the Trauma of the Pit
Nothing human is alien to the authors of the story of Joseph. The literary power of Joseph’s story is inextricably connected to its psychological power. I seek to unfold this dual feat in my reading of Joseph’s dreams and his traumatic experience at the pit. Special attention will be given to the relevance of Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams to the dream axis in Joseph’s life.
Ilana Pardes is the Katharine Cornell Professor of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently a Visiting Professor of the Program in Judaic Studies at Princeton University. Her work has focused on the nexus of Bible, literature, and culture as well as on questions of gender, aesthetics, and hermeneutics. She is the author of Countertraditions in the Bible: A Feminist Approach (Harvard University Press, 1992), The Biography of Ancient Israel: National Narratives in the Bible (University of California Press, 2000), Melville's Bibles (University of California, 2008); Agnon's Moonstruck Lovers: The Song of Songs in Israeli Culture (The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies, University of Washington Press, 2013), The Song of Songs: A Biography (Princeton University Press, Lives of Great Religious Books, 2019), Ruth: A Migrant’s Tale (Yale University Press, Jewish Lives, 2022).