Till They Have Faces: Lewis’s Psyche Meets the Modern Helen of Troy and Circe

I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the […]

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Once a Prince or Princess: MacDonald’s Moral Superheroines and Heroes in the Princess Tales

Of all the stories I have read, including even all the novels of this same novelist, [The Princess and the Goblin] remains the most real, the most realistic . . […]

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Planets, Poetry, and the Power of Myth in Halo and Destiny

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point . . . A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to […]

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Global Superheroes from the Disneyverse and Studio Ghibli

“Of course, there are universal rules to which all goodness must conform. But that’s only the grammar of virtue. It’s not there that the sap is. He doesn’t make two […]

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Phantastes: Enchanting Beauty and Sacrificial Love

“My spirits rose as I went deeper into the forest … I found cheerfulness to be like life itself – not to be created by any argument”[1] – George MacDonald, […]

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From MacDonald to Magical Realism: Faith and Fantasy with the Romantics, Marquez, Murakami, and Van Halen

In a genuine fairy-story, everything must be miraculous, mysterious, and interrelated; everything must be alive, each in its way. The whole of Nature must be wondrously blended with the whole […]

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Lilith and The Queen’s Gambit: Two Ingenue Who Learn Love Through Sacrifice

Lilith, MacDonald’s final novel written forty years after Phantastes, continues its themes of nature throbbing with vitality, shrouded in beauty, and birthing joy. One key insight from Phantastes, that love […]

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Dante for Moderns

“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost”[1]  – Dante, Inferno   “Already were all my will and […]

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Francis of Assisi

“Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun … Sister Moon … Brother Wind … sister Water … Brother Fire … Sister Mother Earth […]

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Spacemen without Chests? Virtue and Technology in Star Trek and Dune

“What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”[1] C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of […]

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