Wilderness

Wilderness is composed of one nonfiction piece and a collection of poems that use images of the wild, such as forests and the wind, to explore the interactions between humanity and nature. Within the poems is a progression from attempt at mastery over the natural world to humility in response to the untamable to acceptance of the wild places in life, including within one’s own self. Inspired by experiences grounded in the Midwest, these works celebrate nature while also revealing the tension between its simultaneous beauty and danger

The Taylor MacDonald Hamlet Manuscript: A Project of Descriptive and Interpretive Bibliographic Scholarship

George MacDonald, a Victorian writer well known for his fairy-tales, was also popular in his day for lectures on literature, especially and including works of Shakespeare. In 1885, he published his own critical edition of The Tragedie of Hamlet, but before doing so, he heavily annotated a copy of the play interleaved with blank pages. Taylor University acquired this manuscript in 2002. Since December 2016, undergraduate students at Taylor have actively engaged in both self-directed and faculty-mentored studies of the manuscript. Our team, under the leadership of two faculty advisors, spent the summer of 2017 comparing the manuscript to the published 1885 Tragedie of Hamlet. During the course of our study, we hoped to learn the provenance of the manuscript by studying its physicality and connecting it to MacDonald\u27s life. Through bibliographic study, we hoped to provide additional proof of MacDonald\u27s extensive scholarship, especially as it pertains to drama and Shakespeare. Furthermore, we began the search for other known MacDonald manuscripts, and aside from the other two known Hamlet manuscripts attributed to him (at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. and at the Shakespeare Library in Stratford, UK), we discovered similar interleaved manuscripts by MacDonald of King Lear and Timon of Athens. Each of the three students contributed their own individual study to the project-a literary critical look at MacDonald\u27s perspectives on Shakespeare and Hamlet; a comparative analysis of the manuscript; and a biographical study of MacDonald\u27s development as a Shakespearean scholar

Concurrent Paper Session 1A: MacDonald, Neuhouser, and . . .

Hobbits in the Holy Land: Insights from Tolkien on Deriving Meaning from Fiction - Darren Hotmire This paper includes reflections on a friend, Dr. Neuhouser, the founder of the C. S. Lewis Center, who was a mentor to me over the years. It was Dr. Neuhouser who introduced me to the classic work “On Fairy Stories” by J. R. R. Tolkien. In this work Tolkien defines the nature of the Fairy Story. They are not, he says, stories of little flower fairies who delight in playing games in the sunlight. Rather, they are stories which relate to the Land and folk of Faerie and the human interaction with it. While these stories may contain elves, dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons, they are more about the eucatastrophic human interaction or adventure in this perilous realm. George MacDonald, Shakespeare Scholar - Kendra Smalley Literary Healings in Gilman and MacDonald - Darrel Hotmire Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1887. It is a story of a woman who receives medical advice for home management of what would now be called a Major Depressive Episode. Her physician recommends a course of intellectual and societal abstinence as the treatment. The result is worsening depression and resultant psychosis. George MacDonald’s Adela Cathcart is a lengthy novel written in 1864. It is also a story of a woman with depression. The doctor’s prescription for her is societal interaction and creative stimulation. This essay contrasts the two methods of treatment and applies the treatments to modern equivalents. I will write an addendum on homeopathy as understood in the Victorian era. C.S. Lewis\u27s Critical Assessment of George MacDonald - Marsha Daigle-Williamson Lewis gives a complete assessment of George MacDonald, both as a sermon writer and fiction writer, in the “Preface” to his George MacDonald: An Anthology. In it, Lewis refers to MacDonald as his master, but precisely what is it about him that influenced Lewis so deeply? His style? His characters? His stories? His imaginative approach? This paper will address the positives and negatives in Lewis’s assessment of MacDonald as a writer, aiding our understanding of Lewis’s depiction of MacDonald in The Great Divorce