Frodo's dreams

[Aeleorn]

When I read LotR again, I noticed that Frodo dreams of thing that have happened or are about to happen. For example: Chapter 8: Fog on the Barrow Downs:
a song that seemed to come like ... far green country opened before him under a safe sunrise.
I believe Frodo is dreaming of Valinor here

Does anyone know where I could find all of Frodo's dreams and some sort of explanation what they are about?

Love, Aeleorn

[Andorinha]

Aeleorn, there certainly are enough dreams and enough characters having them, that someone surely has systematized this body of lore somewhere. One could even work up an explanatory apparatus of dream types, meanings, and functions to give the whole study a psychological-scientific air. Bet you could get at least a "slender book" out of it! LOL!

An online search, google, brought up all sorts of disconnected, "chat" and "snippets" dealing with one aspect or another of dreams in LotR, but I did not see any grand syntheses on this topic. Maybe some of the newer Tolkien Commentaries have a chapter on the dreams, but my searches at a few book retailing sites, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.Com, did not discover any booklength treatments of Middle-earth Dreams.

As I recall, there was a FotR Study at TR (in the archives) that did some work on several of "Frodo's Dreams," and touched as well on dreams by others.

groups.msn.com/tolkiensring/fotrstudy.msnw

groups.msn.com/tolkiensring/fotrstudy.msnw?action=get_
message&mview=0&ID_Message=8883&LastModified=4675396048054787039

I think the Frodo's dream in chapter five, commented on by Amaranth in the TR archives, may be connected to the dream you mention from chpt 8. They both seem to be parts of a suite of "premonitions" that come to Frodo in his sleep, premonitions regarding a westward trek to the Sea, and then to Valinor. It might be interesting to go through LotR, collect all of Frodo's dreams and see what conclusions one can draw from examining them as a unit. Do his dreams become more powerful as he goes through time? Do his dreams have anything to do with his mental powers being gradually increased by his possession of the Ring? Do his dreams "come true?" Is Frodo able to use the "fore-knowledge" found in his dreams to help him make "correct" choices?

A topic on Frodo's Dreams, or just dreaming in general could be very illuminating!

[FIUT]

Ah, Aeleorn and Andorinha, this sounds very intriguing, in fact I think I'll use it as an excuse to start a fresh re-reading of LOTR, and I'll try to pull out all the Frodo Dreams I can find. One citation that I cannot locate just now seemed to be a predictive dream about Frodo being hunted by something or things that flew. I always wondered if this was a very early reference to the Winged Nazgul.

Andorinha, the impact of the Ring on Frodo dreaming, increasing in strength as he kept it longer, and increasing in power as he neared Mordor, is a very interesting topic. Hmmm, I think I'll look at that aspect as well - you report on Morris!

[Hilary]

Does anyone know where I could find all of Frodo's dreams and some sort of explanation what they are about?

Hi Aeleorn! Verlyn Flieger wrote a book called A Question of Time: Tolkien's Road to Faerie, which contains an entire chapter on "Frodo's Dreams". I've not yet read this book, (I'm still working on another book of her's, Splintered Light), but it may be of interest to you.