Makman, Lisa Hermine. “Child’s Work is Child’s Play:
The Value of George MacDonald’s Diamond,” Children’s Literature Association
Quarterly Vol. 24, No. 3 (Fall 1999): 119-129.
Makman discusses Kingsley's treatment of the child in The Water-Babies,
as well as that of Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland,
in her examination of MacDonald's At the Back of the North
Wind . While the latter work, she declares, presents the child
as the new toy-child, depicting, after the cessation of child-labor, the
gradual development of the notion that children are essentially toys, Kingsley's
novel has a different orientation. "But while Kingsley emphasizes the
mysterious nature of the play-world and its inhabitants, MacDonald focuses
more on the mysterious nature of the child who can enter that world" (122).
The Water-Babies
;
MacDonald, George
; Children
; Carroll,
Lewis
.
Manlove, Colin. “Charles Kingsley: The Water-Babies,”
in Christian Fantasy: From 1200 to the Present (Notre Dame, Indiana:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1992): 183-208.
Manlove provides a thorough analysis of the themes and structure of
The Water-Babies paying particular attention to the distinct Christian
pattern of the novel’s narrative. Throughout his treatment Manlove compares
and contrasts the work of Kingsley with that of George MacDonald.
The Water-Babies
;
MacDonald, George
;
Religion
Manlove, Colin. “MacDonald and Kingsley:
A Victorian Contrast” in William Raeper (ed.) The Gold Thread: Essays on
George MacDonald (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990): 140-162.
In this article Manlove compares and contrasts the characters, the views,
and the writings of Kingsley and George MacDonald, who, he declares were arguably
the only two significant writers of Christian fantasy in the Victorian period.
Generally, Kingsley, whose belief and involvement in science were much greater
than MacDonald's, places nature first while MacDonald chooses "supernature."
Kingsley's God is so identifiable with the works of His creation that He
is only distinguishable from them by faith. The God of MacDonald, who
has a stronger sense of the supernatural and the mystical, is invariably
a person, whereas for Kingsley He is a force. Nevertheless, Manlove
argues that the two writers for all their differences share a particular common
bond, namely "that they chose, alone and at almost the same time in the nineteenth
century, to put what they could of the divine presence in the fairy tale"
(159).
MacDonald, George
; Religion
; Science
;
The Water-Babies
.
Prickett, Stephen. “Adults in Allegory Land:
Kingsley and MacDonald,” in his Victorian Fantasy (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1979): 150-197.
Prickett provides a lengthy examination of The Water-Babies comparing
and contrasting it with several allegorical fantasies of George MacDonald.
Among other topics, he discusses the extent to which Kingsley was influenced
by Wordsworth regarding his view of nature and his attitude to childhood,
as well as by Rabelais. He also examines Platonism, religion, evolution,
and the nature of allegory in The Water-Babies. Prickett declares
that Kingsley and MacDonald have quite distinct mental sets. “Kingsley,
the botanist, marine biologist and historian is fascinated by every minute
detail of this world; ‘other’ worlds are constructs – telling us yet more
about this. MacDonald is a temperamental Platonist, only interested
in the surface of this world for the news it gives him of another, hidden
reality, perceived, as it were, through a glass darkly” (193).
The Water-Babies
;
MacDonald, George
; Rabelais
; Wordsworth
; Nature
; Children
; Religion
; Plato
; Evolution
.
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