Lest Darkness Fall contains many allusions to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).

These allusions serve to illustrate the differences between the two novels, even though their premises are similar.

In Twain's novel, the protagonist is Hank Morgan, an expert in manufacturing just about anything, including firearms, engines, and telegraph lines.

He is a nineteenth-century American who abruptly finds himself in sixthcentury Britain, but not the historical Britain that was slowly descending into barbarism as the Roman Empire declined. Instead, Morgan awakens in the mythical Britain of King Arthur. The land of King Arthur lives in fearful superstition; Morgan is sentenced to burn at the stake but saves himself by predicting the total solar eclipse that he just happens to know is about to occur.

Twain's purpose is to satirize religious and social practices and to revile the "Age of Faith," as the...