I can’t sleep. My name’s Aidan Grey. I’m a twelve—hold up—nearly thirteen-year-old student at P.O.E Academy, and I study the works of Edgar Allan Poe. My birthday is around the corner, but it’s hard to be excited with all this crushing anxiety. Anxiety over what, you ask? Well, it’s not because final exams are coming, and it’s definitely not because of the horrific incident at the Archives—although that, too, has me on edge. Something even more unnerving has been happening. Vivid, life-like nightmares haunt me. I wake up groggy and confused, detached from reality. I don’t know what to do or who to tell. My parents? My friends? The professor? Maybe I’ll just handle this on my own...

Gothic dreams and nightmares is an edited collection on the compelling yet under-theorised subject of Gothic dreams and nightmares ranging across more than two centuries of literature, the visual arts, and twentieth- and twenty-first century visual media. Written by an international group of experts, including leading and lesser-known scholars, it considers its subject in various national, cultural, and socio-historical contexts, engaging with questions of philosophy, morality, rationality, consciousness, and creativity.

The Nobel Prize–winning poet and man of letters Octavio Paz was also a brilliant reader of other writers, and this book selects his best critical essays from over three decades. In the sixteen pieces collected here, Paz discusses a wide range of poets and writers, both American and international, from Robert Frost and Walt Whitman to William Carlos Williams; from Fyodor Dostoevsky to Luis Buñuel to Alexander Solzhenitsyn; and from Charles Baudelaire to Jean-Paul Sartre, André Breton, and Henri Michaux. Paz writes, “I believe that a writer’s attitude to language should be that of a lover: fidelity and, at the same time, a lack of respect for the beloved object. Veneration and transgression.” When this original thinker meets these writers, each essay is an adventure of the mind.

This fascinating reference covers the major topics concerning dreaming and sleep, based on the latest empirical evidence from sleep research as well as drawn from a broad range of dream-related interdisciplinary contexts, including history and anthropology. While many books have been written on the subject of sleep and dreams, no other resource has provided the depth of empirical evidence concerning sleep and dream phenomena nor revealed the latest scientific breakthroughs in the field. Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreams: The Evolution, Function, Nature, and Mysteries of Slumber explores the evolution, nature, and functions of sleep and dreams. The encyclopedia is divided into two volumes and is arranged alphabetically by entry. Topics include nightmares and their treatment, how sleep and dreams change across the lifetime, and the new field of evolution of sleep and dream. While this book includes ample material on the science of sleep and dreams, content is drawn from a broad range of disciplinary contexts, including history and anthropology.

Octavio Paz presents his sustained reflections on the poetic phenomenon and on the place of poetry in history and in our personal lives.