George MacDonald
Description
The Scottish poet, author, and Christian minister George MacDonald is widely known as an inspiration for the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Lewis Carroll, among others. Nineteenth century photographs of MacDonald present a forbidding visage, embodying Victorian-era solemnity. Yet behind the facade, as Daniel Gabelman writes, lived a whimsical and fantastical muse. Indeed, MacDonald imbued theological weight through childlike lightheartedness. Gabelman ably reveals in MacDonald's writings a bridge between playfulness and seriousness in the modern imagination. George MacDonald delivers a balanced reading of its subject that ultimately lends a new theological and literary weight to whimsy.
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Content
Introduction: The Gravity of a Child at Play
Part I: Modalities of Levity
1 The Levity of Saints and Angels
2 Ecstasy and Folly
Lightening the Self for Its Journey
3 Vanity and Play
Liberation from Seriousness for Metamorphosis
4 Carnival and Sabbath
A Time for Renewal, Rebellion, and Revelation
Part II: MacDonald's Fairytale Levity
5 "Never so Real as When They Are Solemn"
Victorians and Seriousness
6 Time
Fairyland's Festive Sabbath
7 Space
Fairyland's Ecstatic Cosmology
8 Transformation
"Shall not the Possible Become the Real?"
Conclusion: The Haunting Force of Levity
Notes
Bibliography
Index
