Haunted childhoods in George MacDonald / / John Patrick Pazdziora.

• Superior document: SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature ; 29
• VerfasserIn: Pazdziora, John Patrick,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden : : Brill Rodopi,, [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature ; 29.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource.

George MacDonald is generally remembered as a benevolent preacher who wrote fairy-tales 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 MacDonald appropriated traditional Scottish-folk narratives to help child readers apprehend his mystically-inclined understanding of mortality.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements -- Introduction: ‘The harvest of the grave’ -- 1 ‘Stranded by night on the low coast of Death’ -- 2 ‘To no system could I subscribe’ -- 3 ‘The essence of religion’ -- 4 ‘Joy of Being’ -- 5 Contents Outline -- 1 ‘Is there a fairy-country, brother?’: Letters from Arundel -- 1 ‘The best thing’ -- 2 ‘Serious difficulties in the church’ -- 3 ‘The aspiring child’ -- 4 ‘Trying to catch the corn-scraich’ -- 5 ‘The theme that most inspired George MacDonald’ -- 2 ‘Any other child is like me’: Sickness at Huntly -- 1 ‘I should not have known her’ -- 2 ‘Childness’ -- 3 ‘Trees are growing coffins’ -- 4 ‘The outward form of birth’ -- 3 ‘A whole churchyard of spectres’: Death from Within -- 1 ‘The Psyche is aloft’ -- 2 ‘I was dead, and right content’ -- 3 ‘The Father of fathers’ -- 4 ‘I brooded over tales of terror’ -- 4 ‘Death and other painful realities’: The Dying Child -- 1‘What he did remember was very hard to tell’ -- 2‘I do not think he was right’ -- 3‘I thought you were dead’ -- 4‘People call me by dreadful names’ -- 5 ‘Questions that can never be answered’: The Child Alone -- 1 ‘The sun, moon, and stars lived there’ -- 2 ‘Jesus is dead’ -- 3 ‘Mountains and valleys’ -- 4 ‘Alone in the strange night’ -- 5 ‘We are all orphans, you and I’ -- 6 ‘I should so like to be myself’: The Stolen Child -- 1 ‘I don’t like the fairies’ -- 2 ‘Hold me fast and fear me not’ -- 3 ‘The right critics of them will be children’ -- Conclusion: ‘Now we must wait’ -- Bibliography -- Index.