Sleep and stress management in Enlightenment literature and poetry.

Abstract

'Sleep and stress management in Enlightenment literature and poetry' argues that the relationship between sleep and stress, as we now call it, was well known in long eighteenth-century Britain. This period was one of changing theories about the nature of the body and mind due to the shift from received wisdom and religious dogma to modern experimental science, although there were some continuities with older ideas about regimen from classical medicine. The stresses known to disrupt sleep were often associated with unhealthy lifestyles and pressures of fashionable people of the upper classes, with the lower orders thought to be less susceptible to broken sleep because of their healthier modes of living (less sedentary, less corrupted by rich food and drink, earlier sleeping times more connected with natural rhythms). This article also argues that information about managing stress and sleep was delivered to a wide public audience, not only in prose self-help manuals, but also in 'regimen' poetry written by doctors. Highly popular poems such as Dr Edward Baynard's comical Health, A Poem (1719), and Dr John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem (1744) gave medical lifestyle advice in an entertaining literary form that sugared the pill of dull lifestyle recommendations and treatments.