This study examines the imaginative world of poor and ordinary people in pre-industrial Europe, exploring their everyday preoccupations, fears and fantasies. Camporesi develops the claim that many people in early-modern Europe lived in a state of almost permanent hallucination, drugged by their hunger or by bread adulterated with hallucinogenic herbs. The use of opiate products, administered even to children and infants, was widespread and was linked to a popular mythology in which herbalists and exorcists were important cultural figures. Through a reconstruction of the everyday imaginative life of peasants, beggars and the poor, Camporesi presents a disconcerting image of early-modern Europe as a vast laboratory of dreams. This book provides an insight into the everyday life and attitudes of people in pre-industrial Europe.

Translated by: David Gentilcore