Daniel Creed

Connecting Dimension: Direction, Location, and Form in the fantasies of George MacDonald

Creed, Daniel. "Connecting Dimension: Direction, Location, and Form in the Fantasies of George MacDonald." North Wind: A journal of George MacDonald studies. Vol 33 (2014): 1-20. Print.

This article posits a unification for the novels of George MacDonald through an analysis located through Hegelian becoming. This theoretical position presents the idea that MacDonald’s novels, while incorporating Christian themes, are not merely Christian allegory, but a call for a unification of the religious and philosophical consciousnesses as a way to merge into the absolute. Though they have traditionally been studied separately, MacDonald’s liminal (Phantastes, Lilith) and mythopoetic (The Princess and Curdie, The Princess and the Goblin) fantasy novels present a unified movement to transcend the philosophical consciousness and become one with the absolute. This study focuses on tropes and direction in each of the four novels to make the case that MacDonald’s use of symmetrical movements, locations, and tropes within the text calls for an examination of the novels as a singular corpus.