Session 2-B: George MacDonald and His Literary Companions

Abstract

Imbruted Souls in Milton and MacDonald - Larry E. Fink Beginning with classical literature, the motif of humans being turned into animals has been common (Odysseus; men transformed by Circe, some of the stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses). In English literature, as early as Chaucer we find mentions of a time when “Beestes and brides couden speke and singe.” As a rule, talking animals appear in stories of an innocent time or in stories for children, fulfilling the wish that pets and wild friends could join fully in our play. The effect is nostalgic, humorous, comic, or simply charming. However, when humans become animalized, moral degeneration is usually the theme, and horror the tone. George MacDonald regularly quotes or alludes to Milton. One of his most compelling characters, Lilith, owes much to Milton’s Satan, as I have argued in another paper. Here, I will explore Milton’s concept of the brute – the animal – in contrast to human nature, both created good as portrayed in Paradise Lost, and consider possible connections between Milton’s Comus and MacDonald’s Curdie stories, particularly how brutish behavior turns people – outwardly or inwardly – into animals. Finally, I will examine “The Adventure of Eustace” in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. David Elginbrod as a Prototype of the Wingfold Trilogy in Connection with Coleridge and a Joan Drakes\u27 Case and Its Influence Upon a Certain Victorian Novelist - Miho Yamaguchi George MacDonald and Oscar Wilde: Two Victorian Nonconformists - Laura Stanife