| Dreams, Sleep, and Shakespeare's Genres This book explores how Shakespeare uses images of dreams and sleep to define his dramatic worlds. Surveying Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, histories, and late plays, it argues that Shakespeare systematically exploits early modern physiological, religious, and political understandings of dreams and sleep in order to reshape conventions of dramatic genre, and to experiment with dream-inspired plots. Claude Fretz is Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast, UK, and Associate Fellow of the research centre 'European Dream-Cultures' at Saarland University, Germany. He obtained his PhD from the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham. He has published on Shakespeare, representations of dreams and sleep in early modern literature, and Restoration drama. |