Read more
Dreams in Early Modern England shows the variety and complexity of the early modern English discourses on dreams, from the role of dreams and dream theory in framing religious, scientific and philosophical debates, to the way that dreams continued to offer important spiritual and supernatural guidance and lastly how ordinary people exercised agency over their lives through interpreting and using dreams. While today we tend to conceptualize dreams and dreaming as largely psychological, this study shows how early modern people understood dreams and dreaming as many different things, most significantly as political, religious, medical, philosophical and supernatural.
List of contents
List of figures
Acknowledgements
A Note on Transcriptions
Introduction
Chapter 1: "Seasons of Sleep:" Natural Dreams, Health and the Physiology of Sleep Chapter 2: Decoding Dreams: Dreambooks and Divination
Chapter 3: "Nocturnal Whispers of the Almighty": Spiritual Dreams and the
Discernment of Spirits
Chapter 4: "The Terrors of the Night": Nightmares and Sleep Disorders
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Janine Rivière, received her PhD in History from the University of Toronto, Canada in 2013, where she has also been teaching since 2004. She has published widely on the topic of dreams and nightmares in early modern England.
Summary
Dreams in Early Modern England offers an in-depth exploration of the variety of different ways in which early modern people understood and interpreted dreams, from medical explanations to political, religious or supernatural associations.
Through examining how dreams were discussed and presented in a range of diffrerent texts, including both published works and private notes and diaries, this book highlights the many coexisting strands of thought that surrounded dreams in early modern England. Most significantly, it places early modern perceptions of dreams within the social context of the period through an evaluation of how they were shaped by key events of the time, such as the Reformation and the English Civil Wars. The chapters also explore contemporary experiences and ideas of dreams in relation to dream divination, religious visions, sleep, nightmares and sleep disorders.
This book will be of great value to students and academics with an interest in dreams and the understanding of dreams, sleep and nightmares in early modern English society.
Additional text
"This book is an insightful and much-needed account of the nature, variety and use of dreams in early modern culture. By tracing how dreams were interweaved with religious, scientific and philosophical debates, and with the landscapes of everyday life in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England, Riviere makes a persuasive case for the active agency of dreams in shaping personal identities and broader cultural processes. This book is a ‘must-read’ for anyone who wants to delve deeper into the relationship between dreams, selfhood and nocturnal culture in the early modern world."
Sasha Handley, University of Manchester, UK
