Tag Archives: allegory

N.K. Jemisin’s Super Strange Urban Apocalypse in The City We Became: Part 1: The Allegory That is Born (Blogging the Hugos 2021)

Posted on December 7, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

I first encountered N.K. Jemisin’s “Great City” series in her bracing, breakneck-speed short story, “The City Born Great,” which (in an edited form) is the prologue to The City We Became. Jemisin is one of this generation’s great speculative fiction … Continue reading →

Posted in Blogging the Hugos, Fictional Worlds, News & Links, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

The Fantastic Imagination: An Essay on Fantasy Theory by George MacDonald

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

This essay is a great find, originally an introduction to the collection of The Light Princess and Other Fairy Tales. With George MacDonald’s characteristic wit, it forms a nice partnership with C.S. Lewis’ “On Stories” and J.R.R. Tolkien’s “On Fairy-stories“–and indeed … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Writing, Fictional Worlds, On Writing, Original Research | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 37 Comments

Is Narnia an Allegory? (A Friday Feature from the Vault)

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

No. It’s not.   While tempted to leave it at that and produce the shortest blog of history, I think it is important to let the Narnian himself address the question. C.S. Lewis was, after all, a literary scholar who … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Friday, Fictional Worlds, On Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Five Words We Should Banish from our Vocabulary, Or Preventing Verbicide with C.S. Lewis

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

As a voracious reader and great lover of language, C.S. Lewis was concerned about “verbicide,” what he called the “murder of words.” As Lewis describes in Studies in Words (7-8), verbicide happens in a number of ways: Inflation of a Word’s Value: “Inflation is … Continue reading →

Posted in Thoughtful Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 61 Comments

Losing the Safety of the Real in That Hideous Strength

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Brenton Dickieson

Though at times hauntingly realistic, scattered throughout C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy are moments where reality slides away from us. In the midst of the mundane—a walk at night, a conversation in a parlor, a sleepy, sunny afternoon on a hillside, … Continue reading →

Posted in Fictional Worlds, Original Research | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 41 Comments