Adela Cathcart George MacDonald 9781172369225 Books
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Adela Cathcart George MacDonald 9781172369225 Books
C.S. Lewis called George MacDonald his literary master and stated he quoted from MacDonald in virtually all of his books. "Adela Cathcart," one of George MacDonald's major fictional works, offers readers a good introduction to both the imagination and the theology of this author, once among the world's most famous.MacDonald's body of work encompassed a huge variety, from children's tales to deep examinations of religious themes. MacDonald spoke in many voices, all from a common theme but frequently intermixed to a degree that would require one to read a dozen or more of his other works to grasp with any sense of understanding the breadth of his vision. In "Adela Cathcart," however, MacDonald seemingly isolates his many voices through the invention of a "Story-Telling Society" formed to assist the title character in her recovery from a sense of spiritual depression. Along the way the reader hears not only the many and varied aspects of MacDonald's views, but a skillfully woven tale itself including elements of adventure, humor, romance, even horror, and spiritual development.
George MacDonald's theology takes a back seat in this book, though it is visible, if one looks closely, on every page. However, the story -- and stories -- which comprise "Adela Cathcart" can be enjoyed without significant interference from, and perhaps even enhanced by, the quiet religious aspects. MacDonald is a magnificent writer; "Adela Cathcart" is a wonderful example.
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Adela Cathcart George MacDonald 9781172369225 Books Reviews
Stories can heal. This important yet unbalanced work by MacDonald acts as treatise on the medicinal power of a well told narrative. Framing some of MacDonald's best known short stories is one girl's struggle for meaning and the awakening of her imagination by a group of storytellers.
"Adela Cathcart" showcases the three George MacDonald personas that dominate his cannon. The three main storytellers in this work, Mr. Smith, the curate and the doctor represent the whimsical fairy-tale writer MacDonald, the mystical preacher MacDonald, and the gothic MacDonald. Mr. Smith has told more than "The Light Princess," and "The Giant's Heart." He has also told "The Princess and the Goblin," and "The Wise Woman." He is the spirit of play, of whimsy, the love of nonsense that united him with his friend Lewis Carroll. Likewise, the curate has told more than his tales in the "Adella." He has written parts of the novels, like "Donal Grant," some poetry, and the "Unspoken Sermons." His preaching can either be presented through the vision, the abstract and mysterious, or through the direct absolute moral. The latter can disrupt a narrative, the former brings added depth and significance to the events. The final persona is the doctor who represents the dark gothic side to MacDonald's work. This side of MacDonald has been seen not only in the "Cruel Painter," but in "The Portent" and parts of "Lilith," the story of Cosmo in "Phantastes," and some of the novels.
MacDonald is at his best when all three parts are combined as they are in "On the Back of the North Wind," "Phantastes," the "Golden Key," and even "Lilith." While "Adela" has many wonderful stories, the problem with them is that MacDonald's personas are divorced from each other and can only influence the other through critical or praiseworthy comments after the story is finished. The doctor and the curate cannot collaborate as they do in MacDonald's novels. Neither can Mr. Smith collaborate with the curate as they do in the longer fairy tales. This is bipolar MacDonald fascinating, full of wonder, but flawed and lacking balance.
A note on the text Johannesen prints the best copies of MacDonald's work at a reasonable price. All three volumes are included in this copy.
When George MacDonald published "Adela Cathcart," he felt like a beast of burden harnessed and yoked to a freight carrier. For the first time in his life, his attempts to support himself and his growing household (he and his wife ended up with eleven children, all raised at least to teenager years) were meeting with success, as his writings found an audience and a series of publishers. When he completed his higher education, probably he had no notion that he would end up in the profession of writing for a living, and certainly he had no ambition to be a novelist; he tried novels only as a last resort, when the publisher of his poetry broke the fact to him, that novels were the thing in greatest demand and that he ought to write something that would find favor with the public. C. S. Lewis, himself an eminent author, has observed about MacDonald that the latter had to adapt himself to a genre for which he was ill-suited in order to survive and thrive during his time. MacDonald reported (letter, quoted in biographies) that in order to keep his household solvent, he had to have at least two novels underway at any given time, and at times he had had three novels at a time going.
No wonder that this gifted admirer of German Romantic fairytales (E T A Hoffman, for example, or the lesser-known Novalis) chafed under the restrictions of the conventional English novel, and struggled to arrive at a workable compromise between the novels that fed him and his family, and the symbolic, "mytho-poeic" fantasies that influenced Lewis, Tolkien, and later generations of science-fiction/fantasy writers.
"Adela Cathcart," taken by itself, is a resounding flop, an experimental work whose total is sadly less than the sum of its conflicting parts. MacDonald passed it off as a conventional English novel, and it is nothing like that; the critics observed as much, and the public would not buy it. The weakest part of "Adela Cathcart" is the fictional, novelistic narrative that is supposed to glue all the pieces together, to unify the book into a whole. Tellingly, there are stories within stories in "Adela Cathcart." These short stories, fantasies, and fairy-tales have since been liberated from this book in which they were initially published, and today these tales, such as "The Light Princess" and "The Castle," are in print, in circulation, and identify MacDonald to today's readers and writers, many decades since those MacDonald novels fell into obscurity and oblivion.
MacDonald, after writing a conclusion and denouement for the characters (including the titular heroine) in his narrative, did a curious thing. He tacked on one more tale, without giving it a title, presenting it as the recall of a dream had by the narrating character. Anyone who has read MacDonald's "Lilith" will get goose bumps reading the final tale in "Adela Cathcart," with its yearning to worship the beloved dead, to anticipate a beautiful death, and to turn away from what MacDonald calls "commonplace" conventional life and those who live it. As rebellious as it is romantic, MacDonald's contrast of death versus life is his way of protesting against the hand that fed him, without biting said hand. And it is most plainly understood in light of the fiction that MacDonald would write later as he came into his own.
I bought this edition because I thought it was all three volumes in one, which to all outward appearances it is. It is only the 3rd volume.
C.S. Lewis called George MacDonald his literary master and stated he quoted from MacDonald in virtually all of his books. "Adela Cathcart," one of George MacDonald's major fictional works, offers readers a good introduction to both the imagination and the theology of this author, once among the world's most famous.
MacDonald's body of work encompassed a huge variety, from children's tales to deep examinations of religious themes. MacDonald spoke in many voices, all from a common theme but frequently intermixed to a degree that would require one to read a dozen or more of his other works to grasp with any sense of understanding the breadth of his vision. In "Adela Cathcart," however, MacDonald seemingly isolates his many voices through the invention of a "Story-Telling Society" formed to assist the title character in her recovery from a sense of spiritual depression. Along the way the reader hears not only the many and varied aspects of MacDonald's views, but a skillfully woven tale itself including elements of adventure, humor, romance, even horror, and spiritual development.
George MacDonald's theology takes a back seat in this book, though it is visible, if one looks closely, on every page. However, the story -- and stories -- which comprise "Adela Cathcart" can be enjoyed without significant interference from, and perhaps even enhanced by, the quiet religious aspects. MacDonald is a magnificent writer; "Adela Cathcart" is a wonderful example.
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