Christianity
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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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Educators and parents alike have a reliable tool for Friday afternoons: the sugary incentive. I still remember Mrs. Crow in Grade 1 treating us to popsicles after a good week, or the “penny jar” in Grade 2 that led to a class party. As adults, we often expect children to exhibit intrinsic behavior (doing right…
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I tell a lot of stories to my classes; it’s how we connect. One of my favorites is about a junior high basketball game back in Seattle. We were locked in a back-and-forth battle for the final five minutes—an ulcer the size of a grapefruit growing in my stomach the whole time. With nine seconds…