Dreaming the English Renaissance

Reviews / Votes

"Levin has written a thorough and well-documented book on a topic whose importance for understanding the early modern mind cannot be underestimated. Dreaming the English Renaissance an especially welcome contribution to scholarship on the early modern era: surprisingly, it is the first book to attempt to describe and categorize fully the period's diverse dreams and views about them." (Jennifer Lewin, Shakespeare Studies, Vol. 39, 2023)

"Levin's book displays a fascinating curiosity cabinet of images - from asparagus to Anne Boleyn - that visited the dreams of English men and women during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Borne along by Levin s lively and anecdotal prose, we encounter the major players in British political history, from Richard III to James I, who appear alongside familiar figures in the history of science, including Robert Burton and Nicholas Culpeper. Dreaming the Renaissance will remain a manicule, urging close scrutiny of passages in our sources that might otherwise be dismissed as sensationalism or rhetorical embellishment." (Sarah Gwyneth Ross, Journal of Modern History, Vol. 81 (4), December, 2010)

"In Dreaming the English Renaissance: Politics and Desire in Court and Culture, Carole Levin attempts to trace the varied meanings of dreams in early modern England. She has succeeded admirably in achieving that goal. Levin s treatment is rich in detail drawn from an amazing variety of primary sources, such as learned tomes on dreams, plays, poems, diaries, letters, ballads, pamphlets and broadsheets, as well as on a substantial number of recent scholarly works concerning the life and times of early modern England. This is quite a good book on English dreams and dreamers of the early modern era." (Discoveries)

"Levin s work, as a combination of archival research, historiography, literary criticism, and cultural studies, takes part in a broad spectrum of scholarly conversations." (The Sixteenth Century Journal)

"Carole Levin's latest text brings us into the fluid, illusory, confusing, and conflicting world of early modern dreams, dreamers, and dream theory. Levin's cultural study is accessible to those unfamiliar with the politics and social customs of early modern Europe but is still interesting to those immersed in political, literary, and historical considerations. Her narrative and argument often move in a fluid, dreamlike state, but, ultimately, these dreams teach usabout the fears, hopes, desires, and concerns of early modern people on both personal and grand scales." (Colleen E. Kennedy, Journal of British Studies Book Review)