Leitch’s book expands our understanding of a neglected area of medieval mentalité, 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 John’s College, University of Oxford, Arthurian Literature 2023

'Megan G. Leitch’s Sleep and its Spaces in Middle English Literature significantly expands the critical discussion of the role of sleep and dreams in this period, while also connecting late medieval attitudes to similar or identical concerns in the Early Modern period--and, to a lesser extent, in our own. The study is wide-ranging in terms of the texts surveyed but remains remarkably focused within each chapter’s purview, making arguments succinctly and illustrating them well.'
Sarah Harlan-Haughey, University of Maine, The Medieval Review 2025

Introduction: remarkable sleep
1 Emotions, epistemology and the nature of sleep
2 Ethics, appetite and the dangers of sleep
3 Sleeping spaces and the circumscription of desire
4 The hermeneutics of sleep in Chaucer’s dream poems
Coda: ‘all good letters were layde a slepe’: medieval sleep and early modern heirs
Index