Sleep and its Spaces in Middle English Literature: Emotions, Ethics, Dreams

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Description

Middle English literature is intimately concerned with sleep and the spaces in which it takes place. In the medieval English imagination, sleep is an embodied and culturally determined act. It is both performed and interpreted by characters and contemporaries, subject to a particular habitus and understood through particular hermeneutic lenses. While illuminating the intersecting medical and moral discourses by which it is shaped, sleep also sheds light on subjects in favour of which it has hitherto been overlooked: what sleep can enable (dreams and dream poetry) or what it can stand in for or supersede (desire and sex). This book argues that sleep mediates thematic concerns and questions in ways that have ethical, affective and oneiric implications. At the same time, it offers important contributions to understanding different Middle English genres: romance, dream vision, drama and fabliau.

Reviews

Leitchs book expands our understanding of a neglected area of medieval mentalit, enabling new interpretations of key texts. Arthurian scholars will enjoy rethinking the many sleep-related scenes in the romance corpus through the insights presented in this fascinating book.
Carolyne Larrington,St Johns College, University of Oxford, Arthurian Literature 2023

Author Bio

Megan G. Leitch is Reader in English Literature at Cardiff University