Christian Fantasy

by Colin Manlove

This is the first account of invented stories of the Christian supernatural, of fantasies that depict imagined forms of heaven or hell, angel or devil, world and creator; it considers their growth and changes from the time of Dante to the present day. Relatively infrequent, such works nevertheless for centuries represented some of the highest aspirations of art. Works considered here include the French Queste del Saint Graal, Dante's Commedia, the Middle English Pearl, the first book of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Milton's Paradise Lost, Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell and poems by Blake; and, from the post-Romantic and increasingly less 'Christian' period, the fantasies of George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis and many others. In the development of these works, a primary issue is found to be the fantasy-making imagination itself, at first seen as a potential obstacle to plain Christian purpose, but more recently given freer rein in the new aim of demonstrating God's existence in a more secular world. The picture that emerges is of a literary mode which becomes more fictive and indirect in its presentation of Christian vision.

Genres: Nonfiction

356 pages, Hardcover

First published September 30, 1992

About the author

Colin Nicholas Manlove was a Scottih literary critic with a particular interest in fantasy.

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Christian Fantasy charts the use of fantasy by Christian authors over nearly a millenium of literary change. I got a solid background on a lot of early fantasy precursors I was totally unfamiliar with and unlikely to ever read - the Queste del Saint Graal, or Pilgrim's Progress, or The Faerie Queene. I knew to expect it to some degree, but I was astonished at how overtly allegorical many of these books were; apparently it wasn't acceptable to write flights of fancy if they weren't didactic, and so these dour, sometimes literally Puritanical authors had to insist on the salience of their second meaning to absurd degrees. The Queste is populated with wandering literary critics who analyze its own events to ensure the audience understands; Faerie Queene and Pilgrim's Progress both name their characters after deadly sins and platonic ideals, lest we ignore their higher meanings.

Manlove is a good writer and an insightful reader and critic; his opinions are sharp and his analyses feel thoughtful. But he wastes so much of the book concerned with theology, with how the writers conceptualized fantasy as a tool for religious communication, with the Christian meanings of their texts, that I often got bored and skimmed. It was certainly to the detriment of other angles on the topic. Manlove often acts like his chosen examples are Christian while the rest of the fantasy of the time is not; this may be true in the 20th century, but its an assertion that needs defending in 13th century chivalric Romance. Along the same lines, Manlove never investigates the influence Christianity has had on fantasy - which seems major, and was the thing I was most interested in.

Regardless, it's well-written and I got some good background info from it on the historical evolution of fantasy. He's not stupid, just unfortunately preoccupied with things that don't exist/matter. I understand that it's important and helpful to read Christian works on their own terms, but it's kind of a shame that that's all the book does.