Tag Archives: George Orwell

“The Nightmare Alley of That Hideous Strength: A Look at C.S. Lewis and William Gresham” by G. Connor Salter (Nightmare Alley Series)

Posted on December 28, 2021 by Brenton Dickieson

This is the second post in our “Nightmare Alley” series, where a Pilgrim in Narnia looks at Guillermo del Toro’s critically acclaimed new film, Nightmare Alley, and its connections to the past. The 2021 film, which John Stanifer reviewed last … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Douglas Gresham, g k chesterton, George MacDonald, George Orwell, Guillermo del Toro, Jack Zipes, Joy Davidman, Nightmare Alley, That Hideous Strength, The Inner Ring, The Man Who Was Thursday, The Silver Chair, William Gresham | 11 Comments

George Orwell’s Review of C.S. Lewis’ “That Hideous Strength” (Throwback Thursday)

Posted on September 10, 2020 by Brenton Dickieson

At A Pilgrim in Narnia we have an occasional feature called “Throwback Thursday.” This is where I find a blog post from the past–raiding either my own blog-hoard or someone else’s–and throw it back out into the digital world. This … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews, Throwback Thursdays | Tagged 1984, Animal Farm, books, C.S. Lewis, Chesterton, dystopia, fantasy, Fictional Universes, George Orwell, Nazism, Newspeak, Ransom Trilogy, technocracy, technology, That Hideous Strength, totalitarianism, WWII | 65 Comments

“This Year of the Atom”: A Poem on the Anniversary of Hiroshima, by Joy Davidman

Posted on August 6, 2019 by Brenton Dickieson

At 8:15 local time on Aug 6, 1945, American airship Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing about 100,000 people, most of them civilians. On Aug 9th, the American military would reassert their ability to waste the countryside by … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged A Naked Tree, American politics, Animal Farm, Anna Santamaria, Atomic Bomb, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Hiroshima, Japan, Joy Davidman, Nagasaki, That Hideous Strength, war, WWII | 7 Comments

What Counts as a Classic? A Conversation with C.S. Lewis and Goodreads

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a little post called “Reading and the Cultural Moment, with C.S. Lewis.” Though I now think I could have said it even clearer, I was sharing once again C.S. Lewis’ critical idea that … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged 1984, A Wrinkle in Time, Animal Farm, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Goodreads, Jane Eyre, lion the witch and the wardrobe, Margaret Atwood, Narnia, Netflix, Old Books, On the Reading of Old Books, Terry Pratchett, The Handmaid's Tale, The Hobbit | 48 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 allegory, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Harry Potter, Madeleine L'Engle, Margaret Atwood, neologism, post-truth, Studies in Words, The Allegory of Love, The Handmaid's Tale, truthers, Ursula K. Le Guin, verbicide | 61 Comments

William Morris’ Nonsense from Nowhere

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

One of C.S. Lewis’ great literary conversation partners was William Morris. Lewis wrote literary criticism about him beginning in his first collection of essays (Rehabilitations, 1939, now in Selected Literary Essays). In that early literary essay, delivered first to the … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, C.S. Lewis, g k chesterton, George Orwell, Left Behind, libertarianism, Margaret Atwood, News from Nowhere, philosophical novel, Politics, Socialism, The Hunger Games, The Quest of Bleheris, The Well at the Worlds End, Voltaire, William Morris | 22 Comments

C.S. Lewis’ “Till We Have Faces” is Today’s Daily Deal on Audible

Posted on February 12, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Just a quick note. C.S. Lewis’ classical myth retold, Till We Have Faces, is the Audible.com “Daily Deal.” Most audiobooks run between $10 and $20, but Audible has a membership system. The gold level runs $15 a book, while the platinum … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged 1984, 50 Shades of Grey, audiobooks, C.S. Lewis, Donald Trump, dystopia, essay writing, George Orwell, Joy Davidman, myth, mythopoiea, Ransom Trilogy, The Screwtape Letters, Till We Have Faces | 4 Comments

New Approaches to Academic Writing: An Unusual Marking Note for a Good Student

Posted on December 8, 2016 by Brenton Dickieson

I am at that time of year when the marking pile on my desk is higher than my laptop screen. Like a fool, each year, I go into the marking expecting great things. So far, I have never had a … Continue reading →

Posted in On Writing, Thoughtful Essays | Tagged academic, Alice Walker, autoethnography, B.R. Myers, Christopher Hitchens, Corey Olsen, Dorothy L. Sayers, Flannery O'Connor, George Orwell, Harold Bloom, John Updike, literary criticism, Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, research, Roxane Gay, Slavoj Žižek, Stanley Fish, Teaching, Terry Eagleton, theology, Ursula K. Le Guin, Virginia Woolf, writing | 15 Comments

Orwellian Advice: A Guest Post by the Mere Inkling

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Brenton Dickieson

The title of this post is slightly misleading. In truth, it does contains advice from Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950) whose pen name was George Orwell. However, because of the impact of his two dystopian classics, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, … Continue reading →

Posted in Guest Blogs, Memorable Quotes | Tagged 1984, Animal Farm, C.S. Lewis, dystopia, George Orwell, Politics of the English Language, Science Fiction, The Four Loves, writing | 13 Comments

Is Animal Farm Greater than 1984? C.S. Lewis’ Thoughts about George Orwell’s Work

Posted on August 24, 2015 by Brenton Dickieson

On Dec 12th, 1954 there was a live BBC TV adaption of George Orwell’s chilling dystopia, 1984. Although it was voted one of the top 100 British TV events, it is doubtful that C.S. Lewis took the time to watch it. … Continue reading →