Dreams, Nightmares and Empty Signifiers is the first study of contemporary literary representations of one of the most iconic topoi in English literature and culture the country house. The book analyses nine contemporary novels, including Kazuo Ishiguros The Remains of the Day, Ian McEwans Atonement, Sarah Waterss The Little Stranger and Alan Hollinghursts The Strangers Child, by situating them in a broader context of manorial literary tradition. Analysing the different traditions of the novel of manners, gothic fiction and postmodern metafiction, the book identifies three principal variants of the manorial topos, which expound the country house as the locus of varied, often contradictory meanings.