"The Sleep of Reason discusses the momentous change of attitude and ideas about man, God, and the universe in the English-speaking world between 1840s and the 1920s, from the accession of Victoria to T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. It is the story of a journey from certainty to despair in a world where faith in progress and belief in God had been shattered. The conventional images of Christianity and rational society were replaced by myths and secret fantasies; in novels, songs, and poems, new visions seized the Victorian mind and imagination. Derek Jarrett brilliantly examines this 'osmosis of the imagination' and in so doing far extends our conception of the history of ideas. He recreates a compelling view of the Victorian and Edwardian cosmos of doubt, skepticism, superstition, and profound sense of loss." -- Book Jacket.