Reading the Early Modern Dream

Description

Dreams have been significant in many different cultures, carrying messages about this world and others, posing problems about knowledge, truth, and what it means to be human. This thought-provoking collection of essays explores dreams and visions in early modern Europe, canvassing the place of the dream and dream-theory in texts and in social movements. In topics ranging from the dreams of animals to the visions of Elizabeth I, and from prophetic dreams to ghosts in political writing, this book asks what meanings early modern people found in dreams.

Contents

1. Introduction: Reading the Early Modern Dream

S.J. Wiseman

2. Dreaming, Motion, Meaning: Oneiric Transport in Seventeenth-

Europe

Mary Baine Campbell

3. ‘Onely Proper Unto Man’: Dreaming and Being Human

Erica Fudge

4. Dream-Visions of Elizabeth I

Helen Hackett

5. Dreams, Prophecies and Politics: John Dee and the Elizabethan

Court, 1575-85

Stephen Clucas

6. Dreaming the Dead: Ghosts and History in the early Seventeenth-

Century

Michelle O’Callaghan

7. ‘Imaginarie in Manner, Reall in Matter’: Rachel Speght’s Dreame

and the Female Scholar-Poet

Kate Lilley

8. Dreaming Meanings: Some Early Modern Dream Thoughts

Katharine Hodgkin

9. ‘I Saw No Angel’: Civil War Dreams and the History of Dreaming

S.J. Wiseman

Contributors

Author Bio

Katharine Hodgkin teaches in the School of Social Science, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London.

Michelle O'Callaghan teaches in the School of English and American Literature, University of Reading.

S. J. Wiseman teaches in the School of English and Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Related Subjects

1. Literature & Culture
2. Literary History
3. Early Modern/Renaissance Literature