‘Luther and Dreams’
A public lecture by Prof. Lyndal Roper (University of Oxford) at The University of Melbourne.
Date: Monday 4 December 2017
Time: 6.15–7.30pm
Room 153 (Forum Theatre)
Level 1, Arts West North Wing
The University of Melbourne
Parkville VIC 301
Registrations: http://alumni.online.unimelb.edu.au/lutheranddreams
Information: http://www.historyofemotions.org.au/events/luther-and-dreams/
Enquiries: che-melb-admin@unimelb.edu.au
This lecture marks the 1517–2017 quincentenary of the European Reformation, set in motion by Martin Luther in the German university town of Wittenberg.
Luther regularly labelled superstition, Catholic dogma, and the beliefs of the Turks and the Jews, as ‘dreams’. ‘Lauter somnia’, pure dreams, was one of his favourite insults, and he liked nothing better than to debunk them. Yet Luther was also fascinated by signs and portents, and though he often joked about dreams, he too noted important dreams. Dreams also happened to be recorded at key turning points of the Reformation, and they give rare insight into Luther’s deepest anxieties and feelings. Discussed collectively, Luther and his followers used dream interpretations to communicate concerns they did not discuss explicitly. This lecture explores how historians can make use of dreams to understand the subjectivity of people in the past.
The lecture is co-hosted by the History Discipline of The University of Melbourne.
Professor Lyndal Roper is Regius Professor of History, Oriel College, University of Oxford, and one of the world’s most renowned historians of early modern times. She is the first woman, and the first Australian, to hold the Regius Chair, and in 2016 she received the prestigious Gerda Henkel prize for her ‘trailblazing’ work on social, gender, and psychological history in the age of the Reformation. Her latest book, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (Random House, 2017), is the first historical biography of Luther to be published in English for many decades. She is now writing a history of the German Peasants’ War (1524–1525), the greatest uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Professor Roper is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and the Brandenburg Akademie der Wissenschaften; she is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.