Book in the News: Insomnia
Eluned Summers-Bremner, author of the newly published Insomnia: A Cultural History, was recently interviewed in Macleans Magazine about the book. An excerpt from the interview:
Q: Your book questions current assumptions about sleep. For instance, as a dominant sleep model, is the eight-hour stretch relatively new?A: It is specific to us, and it hasn't got such a very long history. A couple of centuries. Before that, there were lots of different ways of doing sleep.
Q: So how were ancient sleeping rituals different?
A: It made a big difference whether there was moonlight or not because early cultures had no real source of lighting other than the hearth or the fire. In ancient Athens, religious ceremonies were held by moonlight. With us, we really tend to separate day and night, and we regard sleep as supportive of our daytime activity.
Q: Didn't they see sleep as a way to rejuvenate for the next day's work like we do?
A: Sleep had a mystical quality. Quite often, it was seen as a time when divine messages might arrive. It was interpreted as a time when things happen that the gods intended, that were out of your control, so dreams were seen as being prophetic.
Read the full Macleans Magazine interview with Eluned Summers-Bremner
Learn more about Insomnia: A Cultural History