Bedding the Nightmare: Somatic Experience and Narrative Meaning in Dutch and Flemish Legend Texts

Most texts generated by folk narrative research in Flanders and The Netherlands fall into two main categories: memories, and stories with little immediate basis in experience. "Nightmare" texts occur in both groups. The nightmare appears in two guises: in the memories as a horrible nocturnal experience; in the stories as a woman with whom the male subject has sex. This formal division into two categories does not, however, imply that nightmares appear quite differently in them. The memories, like the stories, can be read as referring to a sexual experience. 1]