Daniel Gabelman – författare

This Element investigates the phenomenon of literary doodling-the making of playful verbal and visual creations by professional authors while engaged in another activity. The first part focuses on defining the form and structure of doodles, comparing and contrasting them with adjacent genres such as sketches, caricatures, and illustrations. The second part explores the modality of doodling, examining doodles through the lenses of spectrality, liminality, and play. Drawing on a wide range of theories and backed up with numerous close readings, the Element argues that doodles, despite their apparent triviality, provide valuable insights into the creative processes, authorial habits, and finished works of literary doodlers. Ultimately, this study aims to legitimise doodles as worthy of serious critical attention, demonstrating how they trouble the meaning of texts, introduce semantic flexibility into literary works and their reception, and rejuvenate the joy of readerly discovery.

George MacDonald (1824-1905) remains one of the most persistently read and beloved of the Victorians. His fairy tales and children's books have delighted generations of young readers, while his sermons, essays, and poems still offer startling insights into life and literature. He has increasingly been recognised as one of Scotland's most important nineteenth-century novelists. Here, seventeen new essays from an international, diverse group of scholars illuminate the crucial aspects of MacDonald's remarkable, varied works. The chapters are organised around MacDonald's life, major genres, and central themes, and provide clear points of entry for students, researchers, and curious readers. For readers approaching MacDonald's works for the first time and for those renewing a long acquaintance, The Cambridge Companion to George MacDonald is an indispensable guide. With a foreword by Malcom Guite and an afterword by Roderick McGillis.

George MacDonald (1824-1905) remains one of the most persistently read and beloved of the Victorians. His fairy tales and children's books have delighted generations of young readers, while his sermons, essays, and poems still offer startling insights into life and literature. He has increasingly been recognised as one of Scotland's most important nineteenth-century novelists. Here, seventeen new essays from an international, diverse group of scholars illuminate the crucial aspects of MacDonald's remarkable, varied works. The chapters are organised around MacDonald's life, major genres, and central themes, and provide clear points of entry for students, researchers, and curious readers. For readers approaching MacDonald's works for the first time and for those renewing a long acquaintance, The Cambridge Companion to George MacDonald is an indispensable guide. With a foreword by Malcom Guite and an afterword by Roderick McGillis.

The Scottish poet, author, and Christian minister George MacDonald is widely known as an inspiration for the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Lewis Carroll, among others. Nineteenth century photographs of MacDonald present a forbidding visage, embodying Victorian-era solemnity. Yet behind the facade, as Daniel Gabelman writes, lived a whimsical and fantastical muse. Indeed, MacDonald imbued theological weight through childlike lightheartedness. Gabelman ably reveals in MacDonald's writings a bridge between playfulness and seriousness in the modern imagination. George MacDonald delivers a balanced reading of its subject that ultimately lends a new theological and literary weight to whimsy.