Description:
A collection of essays exploring how biocultural and literary dynamics acted together to shape conceptions of sleep states in the early modern period. Essays envision sleep states as a means of defining the human, both literally and metaphorically.
Brief description: Margaret Simon is Associate Professor of English at North Carolina State University.
Review Quotes:
"This fascinating book argues that human sleep and sleeplessness is (and was) shaped as much by social and cultural factors as by human biology. Its pages represent an important justification of literary and historical inquiries into the extraordinary variability of human sleep habits that can be traced across time and space. Those who choose to read this book will soon appreciate why humanities scholarship is so essential to understanding one of the features of human life."
--Sasha Handley, author of Sleep in Early Modern England