Four Christian Fantasists. A Study of the Fantastic Writings of George MacDonald, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien

J.R.R.Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," it has long been recognized, was shaped and undergirded by his Christian beliefs. But he was not the only writer of fantasy to have a close relationship between his faith and his fiction. This book is a study of such relationships in four writers: Tolkien himself, his friends C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, and, from an earlier generation, George MacDonald. It seeks to look at their use of other worlds and other beings; at their attitudes towards 'escapism'; at the presence of symbolism and myth in their writings; at the themes and ideas they had in common; and at the extent to which their fiction has a value for Christian apologetics.