George MacDonald in the Age of Miracles - (Hansen Lectureship) by Timothy Larsen (Paperback)

About the Book

In this Hansen Lectureship volume, Timothy Larsen considers the legacy of George MacDonald, the Victorian Scottish author and minister who is best known for his pioneering fantasy literature. Larsen explores how MacDonald sought to counteract skepticism, unbelief, naturalism, and materialism and to herald instead the reality of the miraculous, the supernatural, the wondrous, and the realm of the spirit.

Book Synopsis

In this Hansen Lectureship volume, Timothy Larsen considers the legacy of George MacDonald, the Victorian Scottish author and minister who is best known for his pioneering fantasy literature. Larsen explores how MacDonald sought to counteract skepticism, unbelief, naturalism, and materialism and to herald instead the reality of the miraculous, the supernatural, the wondrous, and the realm of the spirit.

Review Quotes

"Drawing widely on George MacDonald's novels, stories, poems, and sermons, Larsen boldly presents him to us in all of his heterodoxical orthodoxy. Here is a fiery Scotsman with a capacious faith and vision who could find Christ in the most unlikely of places."

"In a Victorian religious culture saturated with religious preoccupations and moral anxieties, George MacDonald stands out as a relatively neglected author whose work nonetheless pays careful attention to the intersection of religion and literature. Tim Larsen brilliantly opens up MacDonald's imaginative writing as well as his sermons and essays to demonstrate how closely he followed contemporary interest in Christian doctrine and the challenges it faced in his day. No one who knows Larsen's work will be surprised at this: with wit, knowledge, and an acute critical intelligence, Larsen picks out again and again the ways in which MacDonald's fiction illustrated or experimented with controverted points of Christian doctrine, yet still functioned as good, readable fiction. A series of other interlocutors comment insightfully on Larsen's chapters and open up further seams of interpretation. For anyone interested in Victorian religious history and literary culture, this is a gem of a book."

"In this gem of a book, Timothy Larsen uses the delightful and moving writings of George MacDonald to open surprising new vistas on the religious world of Victorian Britain. I recommend it highly."

"It is hard to imagine a better pairing of author and subject than George MacDonald, one of the essential Victorians and one of the deepest of Christian writers, and Timothy Larsen, one of our very finest historians. This book is truly a joy to read."

"Larsen . . . writes about MacDonald with great sympathy and admiration, but also with a clear eye and deep sense of irony."

"Larsen has an original, interesting, stimulating, and even at times, controversial take on George MacDonald and his work."

"Rarely, if ever, does a theologian grasp the essentials of luminaries such as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, G. K. Chesterton, and Madeleine L'Engle. But here, in this exquisitely argued, beautifully crafted, and elegantly written thesis, Timothy Larsen offers a beguiling meditation on incarnation, doubt, and reenchantment. With his careful and nuanced focus on George MacDonald, Timothy Larsen has produced a poised, sumptuous, and sublime theological essay-worthy, indeed, of Lewis, Chesterton, Tolkien, L'Engle, and MacDonald. This is Christian apologetics at its best and from one of the finest public intellectuals writing in our time."

"These lectures are steeped in a scholarly acquaintance with George MacDonald's writings. Their accessible style aims at bringing MacDonald's theological insights on such ever-pressing matters as religious doubt and the purpose of human suffering to a wider Christian audience."

"Victorian writer George MacDonald was a powerful influence on later authors such as C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, and Madeleine L'Engle. In this fine collection of lectures, scholar Timothy Larsen provides an essential context to MacDonald's life and thought, and indeed to the religious history of the nineteenth century. With his acute literary and theological insights, Larsen's book is a readable and perceptive guide to one of the great Christian thinkers."

About the Author

Timothy Larsen (PhD, University of Stirling) is McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and an Honorary Fellow in the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh, and he has been a Visiting Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, and All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of several books, including John Stuart Mill: A Secular Life, The Slain God: Anthropologists and the Christian Faith, A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians, and Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England.