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To suggest one is “against empathy” sounds, to the modern ear, as inherently absurd as being “against kittens” or “against sunshine.” We have been conditioned to view empathy as an absolute moral good—a panacea for all social ills. However, the weight of neuroscientific and psychological evidence suggests a more radical, counterintuitive premise. As Yale psychologist…
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George MacDonald integrated his understanding of biography as “God’s story” into the very fiber of his fiction. Characters such as Anodos in Phantastes, Wilfrid in Wilfrid Cumbermede, and Belorba Day in The Flight of the Shadow are all autobiographers chronicling their personal transformations. Critics have long noted that MacDonald’s fiction derives its strength from this…
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George MacDonald was profoundly influenced by German Romanticism, particularly through the Idealism and creative imagination of Novalis. Novalis sought to shift the reader’s understanding of truth from an objective “expelling” of data to a subjective “inward” understanding. MacDonald often paraphrased Novalis in his personal correspondence, writing: “The Realist is an Idealist who knows nothing of…
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The Victorian Age represented progress to much of the Western world. With a burgeoning industrial base in Europe and North America, alongside flourishing developments in health, science, and religion, the Victorian era was the precursor to the Modern belief in empirical evidence. This shift paved the way for a more progressive, educated aristocracy that redefined…
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The Wild Knight of Dogma: Chesterton and the Perilous Edge “Orthodoxy is not only… the only safe guardian of morality or order,” G.K. Chesterton writes, “but it is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation, and advance” (O, 133). In the final chapters of Orthodoxy, Chesterton invites his readers to see not the heaviness…
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In his introduction to Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton recounts his journey of examining the great questions of life, only to believe he was alone in his discoveries. He eventually realized he was in the “ridiculous position of being backed up by all of Christendom,” finding that his “fancied” modern ideas were, in fact, “eighteen hundred years…
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Following the Western tradition of spiritual autobiography—established by writers such as St. Augustine and Thomas Merton—G.K. Chesterton compiled his religious views in his most celebrated work, Orthodoxy. Written as a sequel to the critiques found in his earlier book, Heretics, Orthodoxy serves as both a formal apologetic and a personal testimony of his conversion to…
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The Great Divorce, written by C.S. Lewis, is a direct response to William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Lewis believed Blake’s attempt to marry the two realms was a “disastrous error.” He argues against the notion that “some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development, adjustment, or refinement…
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In my previous posts, I explored the symbol of true royalty and the “Solid Land” of goodness in George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin. To conclude this series, we must look into the caverns. MacDonald provides a stark contrast to the King-papa and Princess Irene through the Goblins—a race that represents a “false picture”…
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Ursula Le Guin once observed of George MacDonald’s masterpiece: “A princess is a girl who behaves nobly; a girl who behaves nobly is a princess. Curdie the miner…is a prince. The king is king because he’s a good man. No other definition is allowed. This is radically moral democracy.” Le Guin’s assessment holds because MacDonald…