Puns in dreams--visual as well as verbal. Ann Faraday
pioneered the study of dream puns; she argues in "The Dream Game" that
such puns aren't meant as disguises (Freud's idea), nor are they idle
associations (Havelock Ellis); they often make a sharp point, one hard
to make any other way. Their humor is useful: it sweetens awkward
truths, to coax the reluctant conscious to look! Bad jokes often relax a
skittish audience. And isn't the waking mind about as skittish as you
can get?
This list also includes a related phenomenon, mondegreens:
meaningful mishearings. The word is itself one; as a child, newspaper
columnist Jon Carroll heard a folksong as: Lord So-and-so had died, and
Lady Mondegreen. Years later he learned the line ended and laid him on the green. Examples include As a Hillsborough Child, He has Repented, and God Dressed Ye, Mare.
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