Sleepwalking, Subjectivity and the Nervous Body in Eighteenth‐Century Britain

Abstract

This article offers an in‐depth study of sleepwalking in the long eighteenth century. It explores how and why the physical condition of sleepwalking was conceptually transformed into a modish nervous disorder that was central to explorations of the human mind, imagination and personal identity in the final decades of the century. This cultural revaluation of sleepwalking, or ‘somnambulism’ as it was increasingly termed, is situated within the context of late seventeenth‐ and eighteenth‐century medical and philosophical thought surrounding the physical act of sleep and its disorders, and within the cults of sensibility and Romanticism.

Historicising stress: anguish and insomnia in the middle ages

“…For Cheyne, these nervous conditions, such as hysteria or hypochondria, were reframed or newly identified as arising from the quality of the diseased individual's nerves, particularly if they were too weak or loose. While stress as a concept does not appear in the eighteenth-century medical literature, Cheyne and others argued that inherent dispositions and some external factors could alter the quality of the nerves, leading to various nervous pathologies [7,8].…”

Sociable Sleeping in Early Modern England, 1660–1760

“…Nervous disorders increasingly included sleep disorders, which acquired modish overtones as physicians, philosophers and poets linked them ever more closely with processes of cognition and interpreted them as symptoms of creative genius. Equally important was the opportunity that such visits provided to build personal and professional alliances. Spending time in resorts such as Bath, Epsom, Harrogate, Margate, Southampton and Tunbridge indicated a surfeit of wealth and leisure time.…”

“…The physical demands of keeping nocturnal company described by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must be understood within the context of a burgeoning literature of ‘fashionable’ disorders that enhanced the status of those whose sleep seemed unnatural or was regularly disrupted. Lady Mary's complaints were repeated by writers who identified social engagements as a cause of physical hardship. They could nonetheless find consolation in the act of recording this discomfort since it offered an effective means of social distinction.…”