The must-have book for fashionable Italians in 1499 was the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a lavishly illustrated dream-narrative that recorded the fantastic adventures of Poliphilo as he tracked his beloved Polia through a landscape of classical ruins populated by nymphs and pagan deities. Soon translated into French and English, this immensely popular text testifies to the Renaissance fascination with dreams and dream-imagery. In this class, we will investigate early modern perceptions of sleep and dreams, asking what dreaming meant to a culture that had never heard of Sigmund Freud. We will examine how sleep and dreams were defined by physicians, poets, and artists, viewed as tools for diagnosis, indicators of character, and occasions for divine inspiration. We will examine how sleep and dreams were defined by physicians, poets, and artists, viewed as tools for diagnosis, indicators of character, and occasions for divine inspiration. We will read Renaissance handbooks of dream interpretation, dream-narratives, and records of dreams, and look at paintings, drawings, and engraving on the subject of dreaming as we explore the links between sleep, dreams, and fantasy in Renaissance culture.