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Transpositions is the official blog of the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St Andrews. Featured Posts
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Literature
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Defining Fields: Literature and Theology/Religion
Posted on 15/10/2012 | No CommentsIn 2010, I attended a session on the state of the field of “religion and literature” at the British Association of Victorian Studies conference. I was slightly in awe meeting some of the incredible scholars I’d been reading the past... -
The Dandy Imago Dei: Toward an Incarnational Aesthetics in Kierkegaard
Posted on 08/10/2012 | 3 CommentsOscar Wilde once declared that he only put his talent into his works; his true genius, he insisted, had been reserved for his life. Foppish, brilliant, gleefully self-caricaturing (not even Bunthorne, Gilbert and Sullivan’s attempt at parody, could come close... -
Ancient and Beautiful and True
Posted on 03/02/2012 | 4 CommentsGeorge R.R. Martin famously wrote in The Faces of Fantasy: Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of... -
![George MacDonald speaks of the true essence of a meaningful fairytale in his classic essay, “The Fantastic Imagination”: [A fairytale] cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty...](http://www.transpositions.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TRANS-115x1151.gif "Mything the Point: Why Some Stories Strike True and Others Fall Short [Part Two]")
Mything the Point: Why Some Stories Strike True and Others Fall Short [Part Two]
Posted on 09/12/2011 | 4 CommentsGeorge MacDonald speaks of the true essence of a meaningful fairytale in his classic essay, “The Fantastic Imagination”: [A fairytale] cannot help having some meaning; if it have proportion and harmony it has vitality, and vitality is truth. The beauty... -
Under the Wings of the Bat: Symbol & Community in Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
Posted on 08/12/2011 | 5 CommentsSuperheroes are often re-born in different incarnations. A writer will start the storyline afresh and a new version of the hero will be born. Neil Gaiman’s award-winning story Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? (2009) coalesces previous Batman incarnations, focusing... -
J.R.R. Tolkien & C.S. Lewis on the True Myth of the Gospel
Posted on 06/12/2011 | 4 CommentsOn 30 January 1945, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher about the ‘beauty’ of the Christian story. Regarding the ‘Eden “myth”’, Tolkien thought a worrying consequence of people jettisoning Genesis’s creation account in the face of modern... -
Mything the Point: Why Some Stories Strike True and Others Fall Short [Part One]
Posted on 05/12/2011 | 7 CommentsHave you ever noticed how some stories make a deep impression on certain people yet fail to make a dent in others? You know the sorts that go all in for certain stories: the Trekkies for Star Trek, the Ringers...
