Prophecy And Politics In The Early Carolingian World

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Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World

Author : Andrew Sorber
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040020313
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World by : Andrew Sorber

Download or read book Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World written by Andrew Sorber and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prophetic and apocalyptic rhetoric play critical roles in the development and articulation of political authority in the reigns of Charlemagne (d. 814) and Louis the Pious (d. 840). The rhetorical authority derived from claims of receiving revelation, interpreting divine communication, speaking for God, and foreseeing calamities became a competitive medium through which individuals legitimized political behaviour, debated their long- and short-term aspirations, and struggled for political supremacy. Ranging from claims of revelations, dreams, and visions, to the adoption of rhetorical voices based on biblical prophets, to the interpretation of signs and portents, prophetic rhetoric enjoyed extensive experimentation and varied application throughout early medieval political discourse. Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World argues that claims of divine revelation, resistant to any attempts to monopolize them, provided a powerful means of speaking with authority for all participants in Frankish political discourse. This authority proved instrumental in the articulation and dismantling of effective Carolingian royal authority from 768 to 840. The volume introduces and reinterprets early Carolingian political discourse and intellectual activity, as well as the centrality of apocalypticism in the Carolingian period, by emphasizing prophecy, or revelation and authority, rather than prediction and calamity. Early Carolingian political discourse was a dialogue that took place across royal proclamations, legal statements, historical texts, visions, scriptural commentaries, and manifestations of the natural world, and in this dialogue, the ability to interpret God’s will was as powerful as it was problematic.

Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World

Author : Andrew H. Sorber
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781032424323
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (243 download)

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Book Synopsis Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World by : Andrew H. Sorber

Download or read book Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World written by Andrew H. Sorber and published by . This book was released on 2024 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Prophetic and Apocalyptic rhetoric play critical roles in the development and articulation of political authority in the reigns of Charlemagne (d. 814) and Louis the Pious (d. 840). The rhetorical authority derived from claims of receiving revelation, interpreting divine communication, speaking for God, and foreseeing coming calamity became a competitive medium through which individuals legitimized political behaviour, debated their long- and short-term aspirations, and struggled for political supremacy. Ranging from claims of revelations, dreams, and visions, to the adoption of rhetorical voices based on biblical prophets, to the interpretation of signs and portents, prophetic rhetoric enjoyed extensive experimentation and varied application throughout early medieval political discourse. Prophecy and Politics in the Early Carolingian World argues that claims of divine revelation, resistant to any attempts to monopolize them, provided a powerful means of speaking with authority for all participants in Frankish political discourse. This authority proved instrumental in the articulation and dismantling of effective Carolingian royal authority from 768 to 840. It introduces and reinterprets early Carolingian political discourse and intellectual activity, as well the centrality of apocalypticism in the Carolingian period, by emphasizing prophecy, or revelation and authority, rather than prediction and calamity. Early Carolingian political discourse was a dialogue that took place across royal proclamations, legal statements, historical texts, visions, scriptural commentaries, and manifestations of the natural world, and in this dialogue, the ability to interpret God's will was as powerful as it was problematic"--

The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire

Author : Paul Edward Dutton
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 9780803216532
Total Pages : 378 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (165 download)

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Book Synopsis The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire by : Paul Edward Dutton

Download or read book The Politics of Dreaming in the Carolingian Empire written by Paul Edward Dutton and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1994-01-01 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the reigns of Charlemagne and Charles the Fat, Europe underwent a series of alarming and unsettling changes. Civil war broke out, royal authority was divided, and the brightest of men and women began to entertain nightmarish thoughts of the corruption and collapse of their world. Amidst the ruin of their shaken and shattered assumptions, Carolingian intellectuals wrote down a series of dream texts. The Carolingian oneiric record, though dark with confusion and immoderate emotion, supplies us with a more subjective reading of this formative period of European history than the one found in standard histories. Carolingian dream-authors criticized and complained because they hoped to reform a royal society that had lost its way. This study begins by surveying the sleep of kings and the status of royal dreams from the classical period to the ninth century. Then it runs to an examination of individual dreams and the political disruption that informs them. The reader will encounter a variety of surprising dreams: of Charlemagne's lust, demons and archangels, a sorrowful prophet, disputed property and bullying saints, magical swords and mad princes, and Charles the Fat's journey through an awesome otherworld towards an uncertain constitutional future.

Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe

Author : Israel Sanmartín
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040115918
Total Pages : 336 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe by : Israel Sanmartín

Download or read book Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe written by Israel Sanmartín and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-12 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expecting the End of the World in Medieval Europe: An Interdisciplinary Study examines the phenomenon of medieval eschatology from a global perspective, both geographically and intellectually. The collected contributions analyze texts, authors, social movements, and cultural representations covering a wide period, from the 6th to the 16th century, in geographically liminal spaces where Catholic, Byzantine, Islamic, and Jewish cultures converged. The book is organized in eleven chapters which reflect and explore the following arguments: the study of specific eschatological episodes in medieval Europe and their interpretations; the analysis of apocalyptic visionaries, apocalyptic authors, and their individual contributions; the social and political implications of eschatology in medieval society; the study of medieval apocalyptic literature from a rhetorical, narratological, and historiographical perspective; the history of the transmission of apocalyptic literature and its transformation over time; and a comparative examination of apocalypticism between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern era. This study provides a lens through which academics, specialists, and interested researchers can observe and reflect on this entire eschatological universe, dwelling both on well-known texts, authors, and events, and on others which are much less popular. In gathering different paradigms, tools, and theoretical frameworks, the book exposes readers to the complex reality of medieval anxiety regarding the end of the world.

Emperor of the World

Author : Anne A. Latowsky
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801467780
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Emperor of the World by : Anne A. Latowsky

Download or read book Emperor of the World written by Anne A. Latowsky and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emperor of the World, traces the curious history of the story of the alliances forged by Charlemagne while visiting Jerusalem and Constantinople, revealing how the memory of the Frankish Emperor was manipulated to shape the institutions of kingship and empire in the High Middle Ages. The legend incorporates apocalyptic themes such as the succession of world monarchies at the End of Days and the prophecy of the Last Roman Emperor. Charlemagne's apocryphal journey to the East increasingly resembled the eschatological final journey of the Last Emperor, who was expected to end his reign in Jerusalem after reuniting the Roman Empire prior to the Last Judgment. Latowsky finds that the writers who incorporated this legend did so to support, or in certain cases to criticize, the imperial pretentions of the regimes under which they wrote. Latowsky removes Charlemagne's encounters with the East from their long-presumed Crusading context and shows how a story that began as a rhetorical commonplace of imperial praise evolved over the centuries as an expression of Christian Roman universalism.

Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early Medieval Celtic World

Author : Professor Jonathan Wooding
Publisher : Sydney University Press
ISBN 13 : 1743326955
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (433 download)

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Book Synopsis Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early Medieval Celtic World by : Professor Jonathan Wooding

Download or read book Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early Medieval Celtic World written by Professor Jonathan Wooding and published by Sydney University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-02 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prophecy, Fate and Memory in the Early and Medieval Celtic World brings together a collection of studies that closely explore aspects of culture and history of Celtic-speaking nations. Non-narrative sources and cross-disciplinary approaches shed new light on traditional questions concerning commemoration,sources of political authority, and the nature of religious identity. Leading scholars and early-career researchers bring to bear hermeneutics from studies of religion and literary criticism alongside more traditional philological and historical methodologies. All the studies in this book bring to their particular tasks an acknowledgement of the importance of religion in the worldview of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Their approaches reflect a critical turn in Celtic studies that has proved immensely productive across the last two decades.

History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850

Author : Helmut Reimitz
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1316381021
Total Pages : 529 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (163 download)

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Book Synopsis History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 by : Helmut Reimitz

Download or read book History, Frankish Identity and the Framing of Western Ethnicity, 550–850 written by Helmut Reimitz and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-06 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering study explores early medieval Frankish identity as a window into the formation of a distinct Western conception of ethnicity. Focusing on the turbulent and varied history of Frankish identity in Merovingian and Carolingian historiography, it offers a new basis for comparing the history of collective and ethnic identity in the Christian West with other contexts, especially the Islamic and Byzantine worlds. The tremendous political success of the Frankish kingdoms provided the medieval West with fundamental political, religious and social structures, including a change from the Roman perspective on ethnicity as the quality of the 'Other' to the Carolingian perception that a variety of Christian peoples were chosen by God to reign over the former Roman provinces. Interpreting identity as an open-ended process, Helmut Reimitz explores the role of Frankish identity in the multiple efforts through which societies tried to find order in the rapidly changing post-Roman world.

Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World

Author : Valerie Garver
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 0801464951
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World by : Valerie Garver

Download or read book Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World written by Valerie Garver and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-20 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the wealth of scholarship in recent decades on medieval women, we still know much less about the experiences of women in the early Middle Ages than we do about those in later centuries. In Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World, Valerie L. Garver offers a fresh appraisal of the cultural and social history of eighth- and ninth-century women. Examining changes in women's lives and in the ways others perceived women during the early Middle Ages, she shows that lay and religious women, despite their legal and social constrictions, played integral roles in Carolingian society. Garver's innovative book employs an especially wide range of sources, both textual and material, which she uses to construct a more complex and nuanced impression of aristocratic women than we've seen before. She looks at the importance of female beauty and adornment; the family and the construction of identities and collective memory; education and moral exemplarity; wealth, hospitality and domestic management; textile work, and the lifecycle of elite Carolingian women. Her interdisciplinary approach makes deft use of canons of church councils, chronicles, charters, polyptychs, capitularies, letters, poetry, exegesis, liturgy, inventories, hagiography, memorial books, artworks, archaeological remains, and textiles. Ultimately, Women and Aristocratic Culture in the Carolingian World underlines the centrality of the Carolingian era to the reshaping of antique ideas and the development of lasting social norms.

Between Prophecy and Apocalypse

Author : Matthew Gabriele
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198895518
Total Pages : 159 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (988 download)

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Book Synopsis Between Prophecy and Apocalypse by : Matthew Gabriele

Download or read book Between Prophecy and Apocalypse written by Matthew Gabriele and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-24 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth and eleventh centuries in medieval Europe are commonly seen as a time of uncertainty and loss: an age of lawless aristocrats, of weak political authority, of cultural decline and dissolute monks, and of rampant superstition. It is a period often judged from its margins, compared (mostly negatively) to what came before and what would follow. We impose upon it both a sense of nostalgia and a teleology, as they somehow knowingly foreshadow what is to come. Seeking to complicate this mischaracterisation, which is primarily the invention of nineteenth and early twentieth century historiography, this book maps the movement between two intellectual stances: a shift from prophetic to apocalyptic thinking. Although the roots of this change lay in Late Antiquity, the fulcrum of this transition lies in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Biblical commentators in the fourth and fifth centuries enforced a particular understanding of sacred time that held until the ninth century, when exegetes of the ninth century found in their commentaries a different plan for God's new chosen people. This came into stark relief as the new kingdom of Israel (the Frankish empire under the Carolingians) had splintered in the 840s. God was manifesting his displeasure with the chosen people by fire and sword. What was perhaps unforeseen was that these commentaries that were written in the specific context of the Carolingian Civil War would be heavily copied and read for the next 200 years. Ideas that formed in a world that actively lamented the loss of empire had to be translated to a world that could only dream of that empire. As they spread across Europe, these ideas became the basis for monastic educational practices, and bled into other types of textual production, such as supposedly "secular" histories. Between Prophecy and Apocalypse charts an intellectual transformation triggered when the prescriptions laid out towards the end of the Carolingian empire began to be "realized" in subsequent centuries. Nostalgia entwined with an attentiveness to possible futures and spun together so tightly as to become a double helix. Ultimately, this book will offer a way to understand the central Middle Ages, a period of dynamic intellectual ferment when ideas could inspire action and (seemingly banal) conceptions of time and history could inspire moments of dramatic transformation and horrific violence.

The Early Medieval World [2 volumes]

Author : Michael Frassetto
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 613 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis The Early Medieval World [2 volumes] by : Michael Frassetto

Download or read book The Early Medieval World [2 volumes] written by Michael Frassetto and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-03-14 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a pivotal period in ancient human history: the fall of the Roman Empire and the birth of a new European civilization in the early Middle Ages. The Early Medieval World: From the Fall of Rome to the Time of Charlemagne addresses the social and material culture of this critical period in the evolution of Western society, covering the social, political, cultural, and religious history of the Mediterranean world and northern Europe. The two-volume set explains how invading and migrating barbarian tribes—spurred by raiding Huns from the steppes of Central Asia—contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and documents how the blending of Greco-Roman, Germanic, and Christian cultures birthed a new civilization in Western Europe, creating the Christian Church and the modern nation-state. A-Z entries discuss political transformation, changing religious practices in daily life, sculpture and the arts, material culture, and social structure, and provide biographies of important men and women in the transitional period of late antiquity. The work will be extremely helpful to students learning about the factors that contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire—an important and common topic in world history curricula.

Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire

Author : Matthew Bryan Gillis
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198797583
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire by : Matthew Bryan Gillis

Download or read book Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire written by Matthew Bryan Gillis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire recounts the history of an exceptional ninth-century religious outlaw, Gottschalk of Orbais. Frankish Christianity required obedience to ecclesiastical superiors, voluntary participation in reform, and the belief that salvation was possible for all baptized believers. Yet Gottschalk-a mere priest-developed a controversial, Augustinian-based theology of predestination, claiming that only divine election through grace enabled eternal life. Gottschalk preached to Christians within the Frankish empire-including bishops-and non-Christians beyond its borders, scandalously demanding they confess his doctrine or be revealed as wicked reprobates. Even after his condemnations for heresy in the late 840s, Gottschalk continued his activities from prison thanks to monks who smuggled his pamphlets to a subterranean community of supporters. This study reconstructs the career of the Carolingian Empire's foremost religious dissenter in order to imagine that empire from the perspective of someone who worked to subvert its most fundamental beliefs. Examining the surviving evidence (including his own writings), Matthew Gillis analyzes Gottschalk's literary and spiritual self-representations, his modes of argument, his prophetic claims to martyrdom and miraculous powers, and his shocking defiance to bishops as strategies for influencing contemporaries in changing political circumstances. In the larger history of medieval heresy and dissent, Gottschalk's case reveals how the Carolingian Empire preserved order within the church through coercive reform. The hierarchy compelled Christians to accept correction of perceived sins and errors, while punishing as sources of spiritual corruption those rare dissenters who resisted its authority.

A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages

Author : Kim M. Phillips
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350995428
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (59 download)

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Book Synopsis A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages by : Kim M. Phillips

Download or read book A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages written by Kim M. Phillips and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-02 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The medieval era has been described as 'the Age of Chivalry' and 'the Age of Faith' but also as 'the Dark Ages'. Medieval women have often been viewed as subject to a punishing misogyny which limited their legal rights and economic activities, but some scholars have claimed they enjoyed a 'rough and ready equality' with men. The contrasting figures of Eve and the Virgin Mary loom over historians' interpretations of the period 1000-1500. Yet a wealth of recent historiography goes behind these conventional motifs, showing how medieval women's lives were shaped by status, age, life-stage, geography and religion as well as by gender. A Cultural History of Women in the Middle Ages presents essays on medieval women's life cycle, bodies and sexuality, religion and popular beliefs, medicine and disease, public and private realms, education and work, power, and artistic representation to illustrate the diversity of medieval women's lives and constructions of femininity.

Making and Unmaking the Carolingians

Author : Stuart Airlie
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1786736462
Total Pages : 456 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (867 download)

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Book Synopsis Making and Unmaking the Carolingians by : Stuart Airlie

Download or read book Making and Unmaking the Carolingians written by Stuart Airlie and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-24 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does power manifest itself in individuals? Why do people obey authority? And how does a family, if they are the source of such dominance, convey their superiority and maintain their command in a pre-modern world lacking speedy communications, standing armies and formalised political jurisdiction? Here, Stuart Airlie expertly uses this idea of authority as a lens through which to explore one of the most famous dynasties in medieval Europe: the Carolingians. Ruling the Frankish realm from 751 to 888, the family of Charlemagne had to be ruthless in asserting their status and adept at creating a discourse of Carolingian legitimacy in order to sustain their supremacy. Through its nuanced analysis of authority, politics and family, Making and Unmaking the Carolingians, 751-888 outlines the system which placed the Carolingian dynasty at the centre of the Frankish world. In doing so, Airlie sheds important new light on both the rise and fall of the Carolingian empire and the nature of power in medieval Europe more generally.

The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages

Author : James Palmer
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 131619549X
Total Pages : 269 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages by : James Palmer

Download or read book The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages written by James Palmer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-11-17 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking study reveals the distinctive impact of apocalyptic ideas about time, evil and power on church and society in the Latin West, c.400–c.1050. Drawing on evidence from late antiquity, the Frankish kingdoms, Anglo-Saxon England, Spain and Byzantium and sociological models, James Palmer shows that apocalyptic thought was a more powerful part of mainstream political ideologies and religious reform than many historians believe. Moving beyond the standard 'Terrors of the Year 1000', The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages opens up broader perspectives on heresy, the Antichrist and Last World Emperor legends, chronography, and the relationship between eschatology and apocalypticism. In the process, it offers reassessments of the worlds of Augustine, Gregory of Tours, Bede, Charlemagne and the Ottonians, providing a wide-ranging and up-to-date survey of medieval apocalyptic thought. This is the first full-length English-language treatment of a fundamental and controversial part of medieval religion and society.

Europe: the World of the Middle Ages

Author : Edward Peters
Publisher : Prentice Hall
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1384 pages
Book Rating : 4.F/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Europe: the World of the Middle Ages by : Edward Peters

Download or read book Europe: the World of the Middle Ages written by Edward Peters and published by Prentice Hall. This book was released on 1977 with total page 1384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality

Author : Eric Knibbs
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 303014965X
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality by : Eric Knibbs

Download or read book The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality written by Eric Knibbs and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-27 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essay collection studies the Apocalypse and the end of the world, as these themes occupied the minds of biblical scholars, theologians, and ordinary people in Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Early Modernity. It opens with an innovative series of studies on “Gendering the Apocalypse,” devoted to the texts and contexts of the apocalyptic through the lens of gender. A second section of essays studies the more traditional problem of “Apocalyptic Theory and Exegesis,” with a focus on authors such as Augustine of Hippo and Joachim of Fiore. A final series of essays extends the thematic scope to “The Eschaton in Political, Liturgical, and Literary Contexts.” In these essays, scholars of history, theology, and literature create a dialogue that considers how fear of the end of the world, among the most pervasive emotions in human experience, underlies a great part of Western cultural production.

Dreams and the Invisible World in Colonial New England

Author : Ann Marie Plane
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812246357
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Dreams and the Invisible World in Colonial New England by : Ann Marie Plane

Download or read book Dreams and the Invisible World in Colonial New England written by Ann Marie Plane and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From angels to demonic specters, astonishing visions to devilish terrors, dreams inspired, challenged, and soothed the men and women of seventeenth-century New England. English colonists considered dreams to be fraught messages sent by nature, God, or the Devil; Indians of the region often welcomed dreams as events of tremendous significance. Whether the inspirational vision of an Indian sachem or the nightmare of a Boston magistrate, dreams were treated with respect and care by individuals and their communities. Dreams offered entry to "invisible worlds" that contained vital knowledge not accessible by other means and were viewed as an important source of guidance in the face of war, displacement, shifts in religious thought, and intercultural conflict. Using firsthand accounts of dreams as well as evolving social interpretations of them, Dreams and the Invisible World in Colonial New England explores these little-known aspects of colonial life as a key part of intercultural contact. With themes touching on race, gender, emotions, and interior life, this book reveals the nighttime visions of both colonists and Indians. Ann Marie Plane examines beliefs about faith, providence, power, and the unpredictability of daily life to interpret both the dreams themselves and the act of dream reporting. Through keen analysis of the spiritual and cosmological elements of the early modern world, Plane fills in a critical dimension of the emotional and psychological experience of colonialism.