Eight Children in Narnia is a detailed study of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, exploring the story’s influences, themes, symbols, ironies—and the reasons for its enormous popular success. Lobdell draws attention to insistent motifs in the work: the great house in the country, the past alive in the present, the life of the imagination, the mixture of the familiar and the adventurously new, the combination of pageant and satire, the child as judge, and the child as warrior. A prolific writer and literary scholar with an established reputation, Lewis decided quite late in life to write something completely new to him: a story for children, and he drew upon his own childhood memories as well as his literary and philosophical theories. Among the many important influences Lobdell identifies Bunyan, Swift, Kipling, and the popular children’s writer E. Nesbit, as well as the classic fairy-tale and medieval romance.
Used by C.S. Lewis himself, the term "scientifiction" is revived here as it once encompassed not only what we call science fiction, but also that indeterminate field of the 1940s and 1950s sometimes referred to as science fantasy (leading up to Ray Bradbury), along with a portion of that great realm that has come, since the advent of The Lord of the Rings, to be called fantasy. Rather as an eighteenth-century novel may pre-date the divide between novel and romance, so C.S. Lewis's "interplanetary" novels may be considered to pre-date the modern divide between fantasy and science fiction and thus be thought of as "scientifictional" in nature. The stories dealt with are those in which Elwin Ransom is a character, the three usually called the "space trilogy": Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength--and the time-fragment entitled The Dark Tower. Lengthy chapters are devoted to each of the four Ransom stories. The book presents a study of Lewis, the nature of science fiction, the nature of Lewis's "Arcadian" science fiction and his (and its) place in English literary history.
This brilliant work, both personal and professional in character, is a study of alcoholism, of a movement aimed at its cure, and of an individual participant in this development. The author develops an interlinked theory and scientific research program that describe an illness of the mind, body, and spirit. He does so without allowing the assumptions underlying the way we look at one area of illness, say the mind, to contradict the assumptions underlying the way we look at the human body or for that matter the human spirit. That Lobdell carries this project to a successful conclusion makes this a compelling work for everyone in the field of alcohol studies and social pathology. Lobdell, who has written on a broad range of subjects, here argues the originality and importance of recognition of alcoholism as a tripartite illness, and of congruent treatment for the three parts. He thus accepts a medical view of this vast social problem, but also recognizes dimensions within it that go beyond the ordinary limits of medical practice, as well as the complexity of its treatment. His book is at once an intellectual history of Bill W.'s vision; a short history of alcohol addiction and the culture of that addiction; a treatise on the psychological, biochemical, and spiritual aspects of the illness and its treatment; and a scientific research program for the future. Norman K. Denzin of the University of Illinois has hailed the book "as a wonderful story brought to a sophisticated readership, and will widely appeal to the recovering population." Matthew J. Raphael, intimate with the subjects as well as the concerns of this book says, "This Strange Illness is an astounding book. Jared Lobdell, a brilliant polymath, traverses a spectrum of disciplines û from biogenetics and chaos theory to psychology, sociology, and theology û in search of a sufficiently complex and comprehensive understanding alcoholism. This is the most intellectually rigorous study I have ever seen in the field." Jared C. Lobdell is author or editor of a dozen books in history and criticism and a number of articles in fields ranging from alcohol studies to systems analysis. He has served as a fellow at the Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Studies, Brown University. His current positions are at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and adjunct professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.
In the tradition of William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki, and Algernon Blackwood's John Silence, here are four interlinked cases from the manuscripts of the late Professor Palmer Hopkins, correspondent of H.P. Lovecraft and friend of August Derleth. From the Daimones Chtholou lying behind the powwows of Pennsylvania witch doctors, to the devils and lightless angels invoked by the late Stephen Vincent Benet, from the unquiet spirits of the Dutch and Indian War tracked by Professor Hopkins and Wilfred Blanch Talman, to the mysterious voyageur of the Old People tracked by Hopkins and Augie Derleth, these cases search out the dangerous reality of Lovecraft's Mythos.
This brilliant work, both personal and professional in character, is a study of alcoholism, of a movement aimed at its cure, and of an individual participant in this development. The author develops an interlinked theory and scientific research program that describe an illness of the mind, body, and spirit. He does so without allowing the assumptions underlying the way we look at one area of illness, say the mind, to contradict the assumptions underlying the way we look at the human body or for that matter the human spirit. That Lobdell carries this project to a successful conclusion makes this a compelling work for everyone in the field of alcohol studies and social pathology. Lobdell, who has written on a broad range of subjects, here argues the originality and importance of recognition of alcoholism as a tripartite illness, and of congruent treatment for the three parts. He thus accepts a medical view of this vast social problem, but also recognizes dimensions within it that go beyond the ordinary limits of medical practice, as well as the complexity of its treatment. His book is at once an intellectual history of Bill W.'s vision; a short history of alcohol addiction and the culture of that addiction; a treatise on the psychological, biochemical, and spiritual aspects of the illness and its treatment; and a scientific research program for the future. Norman K. Denzin of the University of Illinois has hailed the book "as a wonderful story brought to a sophisticated readership, and will widely appeal to the recovering population." Matthew J. Raphael, intimate with the subjects as well as the concerns of this book says, "This Strange Illness is an astounding book. Jared Lobdell, a brilliant polymath, traverses a spectrum of disciplines û from biogenetics and chaos theory to psychology, sociology, and theology û in search of a sufficiently complex and comprehensive understanding alcoholism. This is the most intellectually rigorous study I have ever seen in the field." Jared C. Lobdell is author or editor of a dozen books in history and criticism and a number of articles in fields ranging from alcohol studies to systems analysis. He has served as a fellow at the Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Studies, Brown University. His current positions are at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and adjunct professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.
Used by C.S. Lewis himself, the term "scientifiction" is revived here as it once encompassed not only what we call science fiction, but also that indeterminate field of the 1940s and 1950s sometimes referred to as science fantasy (leading up to Ray Bradbury), along with a portion of that great realm that has come, since the advent of The Lord of the Rings, to be called fantasy. Rather as an eighteenth-century novel may pre-date the divide between novel and romance, so C.S. Lewis's "interplanetary" novels may be considered to pre-date the modern divide between fantasy and science fiction and thus be thought of as "scientifictional" in nature. The stories dealt with are those in which Elwin Ransom is a character, the three usually called the "space trilogy": Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength--and the time-fragment entitled The Dark Tower. Lengthy chapters are devoted to each of the four Ransom stories. The book presents a study of Lewis, the nature of science fiction, the nature of Lewis's "Arcadian" science fiction and his (and its) place in English literary history.
Eight Children in Narnia is a detailed study of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, exploring the story’s influences, themes, symbols, ironies—and the reasons for its enormous popular success. Lobdell draws attention to insistent motifs in the work: the great house in the country, the past alive in the present, the life of the imagination, the mixture of the familiar and the adventurously new, the combination of pageant and satire, the child as judge, and the child as warrior. A prolific writer and literary scholar with an established reputation, Lewis decided quite late in life to write something completely new to him: a story for children, and he drew upon his own childhood memories as well as his literary and philosophical theories. Among the many important influences Lobdell identifies Bunyan, Swift, Kipling, and the popular children’s writer E. Nesbit, as well as the classic fairy-tale and medieval romance.
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