Peter-André Alt examines the multifaceted history of literary representations of dreams in modern times in relation to their scientific, social, and cultural conditions from the Renaissance to the present. His book narrates the literary cultural history of dreams as a tale of a sleep of reason that confronts humanity with images of its fears and hopes, its superstitions and desires alike. Since antiquity, literature has possessed its own knowledge about human dreams. Its dream stories recount diabolical temptations and divine revelations, fear and desire, horror and pleasure, the labyrinths of memory and the paradise of wishes. Through grotesque images, fantastic tableaux, and visionary stagings, poetry brings to life the nocturnal journeys of the imagination that humans undertake.