Christa Giles

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voyages by decorating his room as the interior of a ship. He
concludes that
There can be no doubt that by transferring
this ingenious trickery, this clever simulation
to the intellectual plane, one can enjoy, just as
easily as on the material plane, imaginary
pleasures similar in all respects to the
pleasures of reality. 369
Thought in this way supplants, or rather is transmuted into
action. Thus, to dream of going to England is as good as, if
not preferable to, the reality.
As the phenomenal world came to be considered
more and more illusory, the interest in both the
subconscious and dreams grew, and these subjects
acquired more prominence in literature. Dreams contained
symbols that required interpretation and were, like art,
symbolic, thereby breaking through mere transient
appearances. It is for this reason that Wilde could claim
that art became ˝the supreme reality and life…a mere mode
of fiction.˝ 370 Further, because the body (form) reveals the
soul (idea), 371 it was underlined that the visible world could
be perceived as a series of hieroglyphs, and therefore that
there was a ˝vital connection between form and
substance.˝ 372 Carlyle outlined this idea in Sartor Resartus,