Sleep, dream, snore, get up early, have nightmares, erotic dreams and mess around in Los Coloquios de Palatino y Pinciano by Juan Arce de Otálora

Abstract

While many scholarly works address mid-sixteenth-century dialogues, Juan Arce de Otálora’s (c. 1515/1520-1562) dialogue Los Coloquios de Palatino y Pinciano, firstly edited in 1995, has been largely overlooked. Otálora’s is a comprehensive and open-minded dialogue, which provides a global vision and, thanks to the heterogeneity of its contents, allows a myriad of possibilities for critical focus. Themes such as dream representation, sleeping, vigil, or reveries, as well as other correlated thematic issues, become a nuanced rich starting point that provides multiple interpretations. Springing from the central thesis, oneiric material holds a part of the interlocutions, culminates in certain sessions, translates Arce’s knowledge on the subject, and shows the curiosity of the men from the Renaissance on the mysteries of human subjectivity, characteristic of a genre with a pedagogical scope like the dialogue.