## Step 6 - Writing

#### The Nightmare revisited

In The nightmare, you read a description of a painting. The painter was very successful with his painting, so he made other ones that were quite similar, and he got copied. You are going to view the painting you saw before and another version of it, by Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard.

- Choose an assignment and write the text.
- Swap your assignments with a class mate.
- Give your comments on grammar and idiom.
- Swap back. Revise your text if you think the comment you received was relevant.
- Put your name on your assignment and the name of your class mate as well (marked: 'Author' and 'Corrector)'.
- Hand in your text for grading.

The assignments are:

1. Give a full description of the painting by Abildgaard, along the lines of the description you read in The nightmare.
2. Compare the two paintings. Use full sentences. Think of things like orientation, who is facing who, attributes, clothing, position, number of persons, way of painting etc.
3. Write your judgement about these paintings. Which one do you like best (or dislike)?
   Give at least three arguments for your opinion.
   The arguments should be explained in at least one paragraph for each argument.
   Your final judgement should at least be a paragraph too.

Read the description of painting 1 again.

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 The Nightmare

Take a look at painting 1 again.

Take a look at painting 2