Sleeping Through the Ages: Two Lectures on the History of Sleep in the Seventeenth and Twentieth Centuries

First, Elizabeth Hunter discusses tales of wonderful sleepers in seventeenth-century England, who slept for unusual periods of time or sleepwalked and did strange or terrible things. How were these tales understood and what did people at this time think of sleep? In the second half, Hannah Ahlheim talks about sleep and dreaming in the 24/7 society of the twentieth century. How does a modern society governed by science, rationality, and efficiency deal with the unruly phenomenon of sleep?