Tag Archives: Reading

The Sorrows of Young Goethe

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Let me tell you a story. In the summer of 1772, 245 years ago, a young Johann Wolfgang von Goethe took a position articling in Wetzlar, Germany. He wasn’t a very good lawyer, however, and spent most of his time … Continue reading →

Posted in Thoughtful Essays | Tagged canon, epistolary fiction, European Literature, Faust, German Literature, Goethe, love, Napoleon, Reading, Romance, Romanticism, suicide, the Romantic Movement, The Sorrows of Young Werther, Werther Fever, writing | 11 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 allegory, books, C.S. Lewis, children's literature, Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, fantasy, Fictional Universes, J.R.R. Tolkien, Narnia, Ransom Trilogy, Reading, Science Fiction, The Fellowship of the Ring, writing | 9 Comments

The Mythogenic Principle, Or Why Reading Zombie Lit at the Beach is a Very Bad Idea

Posted on July 12, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

It’s one of the reasons watching horror films is so fun, isn’t it? Though the possibility that a serial killer who has spent too much time collecting comic books or reading 19th century engineering reports is hiding behind your couch … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged Charles Williams, H.P. Lovecraft, Horror, I Am Legend, IT, Joss Whedon, Prince Edward Island, Reading, Stephen King, The Handmaid's Tale, The Mythogenic Principle, The Name of the Wind, WWZ, Zombieland, zombies | 6 Comments

A Narnian Close Read: Friday Feature

Posted on June 2, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

A resource recently came to me from a homeschool mom. I am honestly not very connected to that kind of network, so I was pleased to bump into the “Close Reads Podcast,” hosted at the Circe Institute. Past books featured … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Friday | Tagged An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis, canon, Feature Friday, Flannery O'Connor, Jane Austen, lion the witch and the wardrobe, podcast, Pride and Prejudice, Reading, The Western Canon, The Wind in the Willows | Leave a comment

Why I Don’t Write Bad Book Reviews

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Though I do not review every book that I read, I do like to highlight a few. In particular, I like to draw attention to books that readers of A Pilgrim in Narnia—in particular, students of C.S. Lewis and the … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged academic, Blogging, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kathryn Lindskoog, Lewis Studies, Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, Reading, research, reviews, The Lion, the Witch, theology and literature, writing | 25 Comments

On Reading Calvin’s Institutes as a Non-Calvinist

Posted on May 17, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

As I come from a non-Calvinist tradition I have never read the foundation of the Reformed tradition, Institutio Christianae Religionis, or Calvin’s Institutes. My theological training was biblical studies, history, and literature, so I never spent much time in Calvin … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged B.B. Warfield, Calvin's Institutes, Calvinism, Charles Hodge, Dallas Willard, Eugene Peterson, J.I. Packer, John Calvin, John Piper, Marilynne Robinson, Old Books, Reading, Stanley Grenz, theology, Wayne Grudem | 16 Comments

A Call for a Silmarillion Talmud

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Though we live in a digital age, we are sometimes artificially constrained by older technologies. Like modern cars and trains that are largely designed according to the size of Roman cart paths, our reading is still shaped by a time … Continue reading →