Shedding Light on His Dark Materials PDF Download

Author: Kurt D. Bruner
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
ISBN: 1414315643
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
The bestselling authors of "Finding God in the Lord of the Rings" team up again in a study of Philip Pullmans popular "His Dark Materials" fantasy series. Released to coincide with the feature film, this book equips parents, teachers, and readers to better understand Pullmans troubling work.

Author: Susan Redington Bobby
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476600813
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
Beyond the His Dark Materials series lies a vast fictional realm populated by the many diverse character creations of Philip Pullman. During a more than 30-year career, Pullman has created worlds filled with quests, trials, tragedies and triumphs, and this book explores those worlds. The picture books, novellas and novels written for children, adolescents and adults are analyzed through the themes of innocence and experience. The journeys Pullman sets his characters on teach them that one must embrace change, loss and suffering to grow in wisdom and grace.

Author: Richard Sharpley
Publisher: Channel View Publications
ISBN: 1845411145
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
The Darker Side of Travel is a contemporary and comprehensive analysis of dark tourism. Drawing on existing literature, numerous examples and introducing new conceptual perspectives, it develops a theoretically informed foundation for examining the demand for and supply of dark tourism experiences. It also explores issues relevant to the development, management and interpretation of visitor sites and attractions associated with death, disaster and suffering.

Author: Catherine Butler
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1137336773
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy is a worldwide classic of modern literature for both children and adults. Challenging in its intellectual scope, ambitious scale and range of literary reference, it is also hugely controversial due to its critique of organised religion. This collection of original essays by an international team of distinguished scholars assesses Pullman's achievement and introduces readers to some of the key debates surrounding His Dark Materials. Covering topics such as religion, gender, childhood and scientific enquiry, the volume also discusses the Hollywood film of the first book and features a new interview with Pullman himself.

Author: Mike Gray
Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht
ISBN: 364760447X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Three recent and commercially successful series of novels employ and adapt the resources of popular fantasy fiction to create visions of religious identity: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials and Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind series. The act of creating fantasy counter-worlds naturally involves all three stories in the creation of what Mike Gray terms "transfigurations of transcendence": hopeful albeit paradoxical encodings of the ambiguous, non-observable reality whose primary locus in modern society is the societally extra-systemic human individual. Popular fantasy fiction turns out to involve acts of world-creation that are inherently religious and inherently paradoxical.A substantive examination shows that all three are involved in more or less intentional re-narrations of traditional Christian beliefs and narratives. The »atheist« His Dark Materials series does not deny but re-imagines the Christian visions of selfhood; the »traditionalist« Left Behind series does not simply replicate but modifies its own declared values; the apparent secularity of the Harry Potter series is shaped by its creative reception of Christian patterns and narratives. While the stories' visions of selfhood clearly clash, the basic paradoxes involved in their struggle to articulate transcendence expose significant parallels and a productive conversation with the Christian tradition.It is not simply that popular fantasy fiction is theologically relevant – the Christian Heilsgeschichte, too, proves to be highly relevant in popular culture. However, while far from obsolescent, models of religious identity in contemporary society require criticism and creativity – and, as evinced most powerfully in the Harry Potter stories, a flair for constructive engagement with paradox.

Author: Janet Heimlich
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616144068
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 608

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Book Description
This revealing, disturbing, and thoroughly researched book exposes a dark side of faith that most Americans do not know exists or have ignored for a long time—religious child maltreatment. After speaking with dozens of victims, perpetrators, and experts, and reviewing a myriad of court cases and studies, the author explains how religious child maltreatment happens. She then takes an in-depth look at the many forms of child maltreatment found in religious contexts, including biblically-prescribed corporal punishment and beliefs about the necessity of "breaking the wills" of children; scaring kids into faith and other types of emotional maltreatment such as spurning, isolating, and withholding love; pedophilic abuse by religious authorities and the failure of religious organizations to support the victims and punish the perpetrators; and religiously-motivated medical neglect in cases of serious health problems. In a concluding chapter, Heimlich raises questions about children’s rights and proposes changes in societal attitudes and improved legislation to protect children from harm. While fully acknowledging that religion can be a source of great comfort, strength, and inspiration to many young people, Heimlich makes a compelling case that, regardless of one’s religious or secular orientation, maltreatment of children under the cloak of religion can never be justified and should not be tolerated.

Author: Tony Watkins
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 083083379X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Uses a Christian perspective to interpret the popular trilogy, offering a look Pullman's life, an overview of the major dimensions of each book, and a critical evaluation of such major themes as sin and the death of God.

Author: Sara K. Day
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351376268
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 426

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Book Description
Victorian literature for audiences of all ages provides a broad foundation upon which to explore complex and evolving ideas about young people. In turn, this collection argues, contemporary works for young people that draw on Victorian literature and culture ultimately reflect our own disruptions and upheavals, particularly as they relate to child and adolescent readers and our experiences of them. The essays therein suggest that we struggle now, as the Victorians did then, to assert a cohesive understanding of young readers, and that this lack of cohesion is a result of or a parallel to the disruptions taking place on a larger (even global) scale.

Author: Philip Pullman
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0375846735
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 560

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Book Description
Lyra and Will find themselves at the center of a battle between the forces of the Authority and those gathered by Lyra's father, Lord Asriel.

Author: Weronika Łaszkiewicz
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476671702
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The debate surrounding the Christian aspects of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter has revealed not only the prominence of religious themes in fantasy fiction, but also readers' concerns over portrayals of religion in fantasy. Yet while analyses of these works fill many volumes, other fantasy series have received much less attention. This critical study explores the fantastic religions and religious themes in American and Canadian works by Stephen R. Donaldson (Chronicles of Thomas Covenant), Guy Gavriel Kay (Fionavar Tapestry), Celia S. Friedman (Coldfire Trilogy), and Brandon Sanderson (Mistborn). References to biblical tradition and Christian teachings reveal these writers' overall approach to Christianity and the relationship between Christianity and the fantasy genre.