Abstract
I have not read any of George MacDonald’s Christian fiction. Kreglinger’s examination has put his work at the top of my ‘to-read’ list. Storied Revelations takes the reader on a journey towards claiming MacDonald’s novel Lilith as parabolic storytelling. From a beginning in literary theory to better understand metaphor, allegory, and parable, Kreglinger traverses historical analysis of some of MacDonald’s contemporary writers, approaches, and ideas, as she equips her own readers with the tools necessary for appreciating her nuanced reading of this important work of Christian fiction.
Christian fiction, in MacDonald’s hands at least, is shown to be akin to the parable form employed by Jesus. Writing in the Victorian era, when the Bible was read literally, widely, and had become so familiar as to have been taken for granted, MacDonald thought that ‘to expect the Bible to contain all truth is to do it great harm and misunderstand its place within God’s revelation in Christ’ (p. 152).
In a time when rational thinking was privileged, MacDonald regarded rational engagement with the good news of Christ as insufficient for the transformation of a person—the Bible’s purpose. Imagination, challenged by Jesus’ parables in particular, must be stirred if one is to practice the way of God revealed in those parables (p. 152). Parables are not addressed to the intellect; they are designed to make one feel and thereby change one’s attitudes and behaviour (p. 161).
Kreglinger’s exploration of the poetic is an affirmation of the need to reinvest Biblical stories and themes with symbolic, poetic language, with its ‘original power to reveal aspects of our lives that are real but unseen’ (p. 157). MacDonald was not alone in such thinking. Kreglinger notes important relationships between MacDonald’s writings and those of Novalis, Kant, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (e.g., pp. 68, 79, 84).
Kreglinger’s analysis of MacDonald’s use of parabolic style in Lilith shows her reader that ‘in creating fiction where old symbols are used in a surprising way, MacDonald sees the possibility of reawakening the reader to old truths, and in his case, Christian truth with which his Victorian audience was all too familiar but without power to transform their lives’ (p. 157). Kreglinger’s insightful analysis of the work of George MacDonald is a worthy addition to your ‘to-read list’. More than that, Storied Revelations is an exhortation to any who engage with the Bible to do so using their imagination.