ABSTRACT
It was in the conflicting contexts of, on the one hand, a scientific culture which treated them as meaningless and, on the other, a literary tradition for which they were highly significant, that Freud first became interested in dreams. In reinvigorating the study of dreams Freud was, in some respects, rediscovering the roots of modernity; but he was also connecting modernity with some of the oldest traditions within western society. His texts, therefore, should be read not only in the context of social and intellectual traditions impinging on fin-de-siècle culture, but more generally in relation to a broader framework of changing western conceptions of the nature and significance of dreams.
