The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
Francisco Goya (1799 (published; plates 1797–1798))
In The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, a dozing thinker at his desk unleashes a storm of <strong>owls</strong>, <strong>bats</strong>, and a watchful <strong>lynx</strong>, staging Goya’s program for Los Caprichos. The print argues that when <strong>reason</strong> lapses—or when <strong>imagination</strong> is severed from it—social <strong>monsters</strong> of folly and superstition multiply.
