Four Christian Fantasists

Four Christian Fantasists: A Study of the Fantastic Writings of George MacDonald, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien
Author	Richard Sturch
Publisher	Walking Tree Publishers
Released	2001 (2nd edition 2007)
Format	Paperback
Pages	148
ISBN	3905703047
Series	Cormarë Series
Preceded by	Root and Branch - Approaches towards Understanding Tolkien
Followed by	Tolkien in Translation

Four Christian Fantasists: A Study of the Fantastic Writings of George MacDonald, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien is the third book of Walking Tree's Cormarë Series. Unlike most other volumes, it is not a collection of essays, but a single work by Richard Sturch.

From the publisher

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, it has long been recognized, was shaped and undergirded by his Christian beliefs. But he was not the only writer of fantasy to have a close relationship between his faith and his fiction. This book is a study of such relationships in four writers: Tolkien himself, his friends C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, and, from an earlier generation, George MacDonald. It seeks to look at their use of other worlds and other beings; at their attitudes towards 'escapism'; at the presence of symbolism and myth in their writings; at the themes and ideas they had in common; and at the extent to which their fiction has a value for Christian apologetics.

Contents

• Chapter 1 - Introduction: On Christian Fantasists
• Chapter 2 - Other Worlds and Other Beings
• Chapter 3 - The Charge of Escapism
• Chapter 4 - Varieties of Symbolism
• Chapter 5 - Themes
• Chapter 6 - Apologetics
• Appendix - Three Unbaptized Imaginations
• Bibliography

External links

• Official product page
• Review by Neil Mercer, originally published in Amon Hen 170