Figures of insanity are common in story telling, and perhaps especially so in the genres that depart from realism. They often serve as a counter point to the actions of the sane heroes of the story while also illuminating aspects of the world that are not accessible to those rational characters. In the case of […]
C.S Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia are steeped in Christian theology to a degree that even to a reader not searching for it some themes come through clearly. From the publication of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950 with its clear allusions to the crucifixion to The Last Battle’s end of days as […]
Separated by over a thousand years Beowulf and How to Train your Dragon exist in very different mediums and in very different contexts. Beowulf is an epic poem written in Old English that traces the life of a monster killing hero as the moves from traveller to king to his ultimate demise at the hands […]
JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy is often considered a modern masterpiece, an artful construction and the keystone work of a genre. The trilogy is supported not only by several other works that he published during his life like The Hobbit or The Adventures of Tom Bombadil but also by the thousands of […]
Because suffering and general misery seem to be fairly common topics in the books English teachers assign as class readings the experience of reading these books can often be uncomfortable for the reader. The subject of whether serious topics improve the quality of literature or the role the reader should have in the analysis of […]
English classes come with a syllabus, a list of works that someone has decided are important and has curated into a course. If someone were reading independently, making their own list up along as they went it might take them years to have read all the books that appear on a single reading list and […]
Religion is a central part of real world cultures around the world and since art imitates life it also becomes a central part of the fictional worlds that authors create. The appearance of these religions changes depending on the genres that they are places within but regardless of what forms they take fictional theologies can […]
Res Gestae 