## Step 2 - Reading

#### The Nightmare

You are going to read a text about the painting 'The Nightmare'.

- Read the text and do assignment 1.
- Read the text again and do assignment 2, 3 and 4.

#### Assignment 1

Read the text and answer the questions on your own, then discuss the answers in your group.

- Use key words summarizing how the painting is described in the text.
- What background information on the painting do you get?
- What is the etymology of the word "nightmare"?
- Watch the painting and compare the description in the text with the painting.

Read the text.

The Nightmare The Nightmare simultaneously offers both the image of a dream — by indicating the effect of the nightmare on the woman — and a dream image — in symbolically portraying the sleeping vision. It depicts a sleeping woman draped over the end of a bed with her head hanging down, exposing her long neck. She is surmounted by an incubus that peers out at the viewer. The sleeper seems lifeless, and, lying on her back, she takes a position believed to encourage nightmares. Her brilliant coloration is set against the darker reds, yellows, and ochres of the background; Fuseli used a chiaroscuro effect to create strong contrasts between light and shade. The interior is contemporary and fashionable, and contains a small table on which rests a mirror, phial, and book. The room is hung with red velvet curtains which drape behind the bed. Emerging from a parting in the curtain is the head of a horse with bold, featureless eyes. For contemporary viewers, The Nightmare invoked the relationship of the incubus and the horse (mare) to nightmares. The work was likely inspired by the waking dreams experienced by Fuseli and his contemporaries, who found that these experiences related to folkloric beliefs like the Germanic tales about demons and witches that possessed people who slept alone. In these stories, men were visited by horses or hags, giving rise to the terms "hag-riding" and "mare-riding", and women were believed to engage in sex with the devil. The etymology of the word "nightmare", however, does not relate to horses. Rather, the word is derived from mara, a Scandinavian mythological term referring to a spirit sent to torment or suffocate sleepers. The early meaning of "nightmare" included the sleeper's experience of weight on the chest combined with sleep paralysis, dyspnea, or a feeling of dread. The painting incorporates a variety of imagery associated with these ideas, depicting a mare's head and a demon crouched atop the woman. Source: Wikipedia

Watch the painting The Nightmare, made by Henry Fuseli.

#### Assignment 2

Vocabulary assignment

- Find out the meaning of the word 'incubus'. What is the opposite of an incubus?
  The clues are not in the text. Use English language Internet pages.
- What does 'chiaroscuro' mean? The clue is in the text.

#### Assignment 4

Detective assignment (use the Internet, English language pages only of course)

- The lady in the picture is sleeping or, possibly, unconscious. There is an indication in the picture for the cause of her unconsciousness. It is on the small table: the phial.
  It seems to be uncorked. It is quite possible that she drank some of its contents before she fell asleep. In that case, it is probably something to help you sleep.
- Considering the painting dates from 1781, find out what possibly made her sleep, how it was called at the time and how we call it now.