Where did the concept of fantasy originate? For that matter where did the concept of fiction come from? Ancient man had sacred texts, but they certainly did not consider them “fantasy.” According to Gene Veith, it was the Bible that made fantasy possible in the first place. While the Greeks emphasized imitation, the Bible emphasized […]
Imago Dei and the Redemptive Power of Fantasy – Part 4 Read More »
Another common objection of our day is that fairy stories and fairy tales in particular are scary and violent and are therefore unfit for children. In the Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Bruno Bettelheim deals with this issue at length. Bettelheim was a famous child psychologist who worked with troubled
Imago Dei and the Redemptive Power of Fantasy – Part 3 Read More »
There is no natural connection between the minds of children and fairy tales, states Tolkien. That’s the assumption of people who tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than as normal if immature members of a particular family and of the human family at large. He
Imago Dei and the Redemptive Power of Fantasy – Part 2 Read More »
This essay was presented as an essay at the 2011 CiRCE Conference. There have been over 100 million copies of The Lord of the Rings sold. The Harry Potter series has sold 450 million copies, making it the bestselling book series in history. The last four books of that series consecutively set records as the
Imago Dei and the Redemptive Power of Fantasy – Part 1 Read More »
