The A-Z of C S Lewis by Duriez Colin

Author:Duriez, Colin [Duriez, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Lion Books
Published: 2013-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

M

McCallum, Ronald Buchanan (1898–1973) A member of the Inklings* and a fellow and tutor of history of Pembroke College, Oxford* University, until 1955, when he was elected Master of Pembroke.

MacDonald, George (1824–1905) The Scottish writer was born in Huntly in rural Aberdeenshire, the son of a weaver. C.S. Lewis regarded his own debt to him as inestimable. Like Lewis, MacDonald lost his mother in boyhood, a fact that touched his thought and writings. His views on the imagination* anticipated those of Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien*, and inspired G.K. Chesterton*. MacDonald was a close friend of Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and John Ruskin, the art critic. His insights into the unconscious mind predated the rise of modern psychology. Like Lewis and Tolkien, he was a scholar as well as a storyteller. George MacDonald made a memorable appearance in C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce*, for Lewis regarded him as his “master”.

MacDonald’s sense that all imaginative meaning* originates with the Christian creator God* became the foundation of C.S. Lewis’s thinking and imagining. Two key essays, “The Imagination: its Functions and its Culture” (1867) and “The Fantastic Imagination” (1882), remarkably foreshadow Tolkien’s famous essay “On Fairy Stories” (1947). (Tolkien’s views on imagination’s role in knowledge significantly helped to persuade C.S. Lewis to convert to Christianity.) As an adolescent, Lewis had stumbled across a copy of MacDonald’s Phantastes* (1858), resulting in what he decribed as a baptism of his imagination. George MacDonald wrote nearly thirty novels, several books of sermons, a number of abiding fantasies* for adults and children, short stories, and poetry. His childhood is beautifully captured in his semi-autobiographical Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871). He never lost sight of his humble childhood and adolescence, when he had lived in a cottage so small that he slept in an attic. He was a happy boy, riding, climbing, swimming, and fishing, and reading while lying on the back of his beloved horse. We catch many glimpses of the countryside he knew and loved in his writings.

MacDonald entered Aberdeen University in 1840, and had a scientific training. For a few years he worked as a tutor in London. Then he entered Highbury Theological College and married. He was called to a church in Arundel, Sussex, where he fell into disfavour with the deacons, who reduced his small salary to persuade him to leave. Some of the poorer members, however, rallied around with offerings they could ill afford. Then he moved to Manchester for some years, preaching to a small congregation and giving lectures. The rapidly growing family was always on the brink of poverty. Fortunately, the poet Lord Byron’s widow, recognizing MacDonald’s literary gifts, started to provide financial help. The family moved down to London, living in a house then called The Retreat, near the Thames at Hammersmith, later owned by William Morris.

Many famous writers and artists came to visit the MacDonalds, as well as people who shared a concern for London’s desperate and crowded poor. One such friend was Charles Dodgson, who let the MacDonald children hear his story, Alice in Wonderland.

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