Sleep Works: Experiments in Science and Literature, 1899-1929
By Sebastian P. Klinger
Johns Hopkins UP, 2025
ISBN: 9781421450803
https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53855/sleep-works
At the turn of the twentieth century, sleep began to be seen not merely as a passive state but as an active, dynamic process crucial to our understanding of consciousness and identity. In Sleep Works, cultural historian and literary scholar Sebastian P. Klinger explores the intriguing connections between scientific inquiry and literary expression during an era when sleep was both a scientific mystery and a cultural fascination.
BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.
Scientists, physicians, and pharmaceutical companies were at the forefront of this newfound fascination with sleep: some researchers distinguished sleep from related states such as fatigue and hypnosis, while others investigated sleep disorders and developed treatments for insomnia. Meanwhile, literary giants like Franz Kafka and Marcel Proust grappled with their own sleep disturbances and channeled these experiences into their writing. Through the lens of their discoveries, Klinger reveals the broader implications of sleep for concepts of selfhood and agency.
Tracing the emergence of interdisciplinary sleep science and the cultural production of sleep through literature, Sleep Works weaves together literary analysis, historical context, and research in the archives of the pharmaceutical industry to provide a comprehensive and compelling account of how sleep has been understood, represented, and experienced in the modern era.
"So much has been written on dreams in literature, so little on the experience of sleep itself. Klinger's fascinating book breaks the mould by placing texts by Proust, Valéry, Kafka, Rilke, and Schnitzler in the context of the sleep science of the early 20th century, as well as the burgeoning drug industry. Paying close attention to language and form, it shows how literary works generated new modes for discussing and understanding sleep. A major contribution to literature and science studies." — Sally Shuttleworth, University of Oxford
"Klinger's book is that rare piece of scholarship that takes up a familiar topic and transforms it into a genuinely new field of inquiry. His incisive analyses introduce us to the poetics of good and bad sleep while showing how literary discourses perform their own sleep experiments." — Jan Mieskowski, Reed College
Sebastian P. Klinger is a researcher and teacher-scholar in the department of German Studies at the University of Vienna, as well as an Honorary Faculty Research Fellow in Modern Languages at the University of Oxford.
