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.

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.

In this volume, scholars from three continents trace the role of dreams in the cultural transitions of the early modern Atlantic world, illustrating how both indigenous and European methods of understanding dream phenomena became central to contests over religious and political power.

Stephen Kruger considers previously neglected material and arrives at a new understanding of this literary genre, and of medieval attitudes to dreaming in general.

From the Iliad to Aristophanes, from the gospel of Matthew to Augustine, Greek and Latin texts are constellated with images of dreams. This cultural history draws on contemporary post-Freudian science and careful critiques of the ancient texts. Harris reminds us of specificities, contexts, and changing attitudes through history.

'...dreaming of bears, or fire, or water...' The greatest of Elizabethan pamphleteers, Nashe had a magical ability with words, never more so than in The Terrors of the Night, where he mulls over ghosts, demons, nightmares and the supernatural. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Thomas Nashe (1567-?1601). Nashe's The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works is available in Penguin Classics.

The Enlightenment, considered an age of rationalism, is not normally associated with miracles. In this intriguing book, however, Jane Shaw presents accounts of inscrutable miracles that occurred to ordinary worshippers in early modern England. She considers the reactions of intellectuals, scientists, and physicians to these miraculous events and through them explores the relations between popular and elite culture of the time. Miraculous events in England between the 1650s and the 1750s were experienced mainly not by Catholics, but by Protestants. The book looks at the political and social context of these events as well as interpretations and explanations of them by scientists, the Court, and the Church, as well as by preachers, pamphleteers, friends, and neighbors. Shaw links the lived religion of the time to intellectual history and amends the hitherto received view. The religious practice of ordinary people was as crucial to the development of Enlightenment thought as the philosophical and theological writings of the elite.