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George MacDonald is generally remembered as a benevolent preacher who wrote fairy-tale books for children. Closer reading, however, reveals one of the most startlingly inventive, slyly subversive Scottish writers of the nineteenth century. His writings for children emerged from his own long struggle with faith and doubt in the face of multiple bereavements, chronic illness, and the persistent threat of early death.
Haunted Childhoods in George MacDonald reconsiders death and divine love in MacDonald’s writings for children. It examines his private letters and public sermons, obscure early writings, and most beloved stories. Setting his work alongside texts by James Hogg and Andrew Lang, it argues that MacDonald appropriated traditional Scottish folk narratives to help child readers apprehend his mystically-inclined understanding of mortality.
Haunted Childhoods in George MacDonald reconsiders death and divine love in MacDonald’s writings for children. It examines his private letters and public sermons, obscure early writings, and most beloved stories. Setting his work alongside texts by James Hogg and Andrew Lang, it argues that MacDonald appropriated traditional Scottish folk narratives to help child readers apprehend his mystically-inclined understanding of mortality.
Price: $137.00
Pages: 222
Publisher: Brill
Imprint: Brill
Series: SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature
Publication Date:
27 August 2020
ISBN: 9789004420595
Format: Hardcover
David Robb, University of Dundee
“John Patrick Pazdziora’s new book offers a notably clear, focused, and carefully argued account of a crucial dimension of George MacDonald’s vision: his treatment of the theme of death in that central aspect of his achievement, his writing for children…. Notably, also, the book firmly roots its account of MacDonald in his Scottish origins, experiences, and inheritance.”
David Jasper, University of Glasgow
“This is a book about children and other serious things—haunted childhoods, death, and mystical theology. It reveals George MacDonald as far more than the Victorian genius of C. S. Lewis, but a major Scottish writer and, in his way, a serious religious thinker.… John Pazdziora’s work makes a profound contribution to the study of literature and theology as well as being a major contribution to work on the writings of George MacDonald.”
Marysa Demoor, Ghent University
“Pazdziora’s innovative and insightful exploration of the work of George MacDonald is a must-read for all those scholars intrigued by the late nineteenth-century infatuation with death, the young child, and the imprint of religion, and the tensions within that unlikely combination.”
“John Patrick Pazdziora’s new book offers a notably clear, focused, and carefully argued account of a crucial dimension of George MacDonald’s vision: his treatment of the theme of death in that central aspect of his achievement, his writing for children…. Notably, also, the book firmly roots its account of MacDonald in his Scottish origins, experiences, and inheritance.”
David Jasper, University of Glasgow
“This is a book about children and other serious things—haunted childhoods, death, and mystical theology. It reveals George MacDonald as far more than the Victorian genius of C. S. Lewis, but a major Scottish writer and, in his way, a serious religious thinker.… John Pazdziora’s work makes a profound contribution to the study of literature and theology as well as being a major contribution to work on the writings of George MacDonald.”
Marysa Demoor, Ghent University
“Pazdziora’s innovative and insightful exploration of the work of George MacDonald is a must-read for all those scholars intrigued by the late nineteenth-century infatuation with death, the young child, and the imprint of religion, and the tensions within that unlikely combination.”
J. Patrick Pazdziora (Ph.D., St Andrews, 2013) is Project Assistant Professor at the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Tokyo, Komaba. He researches Scottish literature in the long nineteenth century, especially the interplay between literature and religion.