'Visions of the Night': The Reform of Popular Dream Beliefs in Early Modern England

In seventeenth-century England a heated debate about dreams arose, centring on their orthodoxy and significance as supernatural or spiritual experiences. Critics of dream interpretation and prophetic dreams came to view collective beliefs as the 'superstitious', 'enthusiastic' and 'ignorant' follies of the so-called 'vulgar', arguing instead that dreams were the meaningless by-products of the imagination. The controversy surrounding dreams was primarily religious and reflective of contemporary concerns about religious orthodoxy and the social order.