Step beyond the wardrobe—discover the stories behind Narnia."A real delight, and full of illumination." —Rowan Williams, author, The Lion's World: A Journey into the Heart of Narnia"Crammed with beguiling, often surprising, insights.” — Brian Sibley, bestselling author of Harry Potter Film Wizardry and The Hobbit: an Unexpected Journey Official Movie GuideWhat’s really lurking beneath the magic of The Lion, the Witch a...

A fascinating exploration of the literary and theological connections in C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.An enthralling companion for readers revisiting C. S. Lewis’s classic Narnia tales. Drawing on sources as wide-ranging as Hamlet, King Solomon’s Mines, The Odyssey, and Tom Brown’s School Days, Bloomfield’s engaging commentary un...

Witchcraft and paganism exert an insistent pressure from the margins of midcentury British detective fiction. This Element investigates the appearance of witchcraft and paganism in the novels of four of the most popular female detective authors of the era: Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Gladys Mitchell. The author approaches the theme of witchcraft and paganism not simply as a matter of content but as an influence which shapes the narrative and its possibilities. The '...

A fascinating exploration of the numerous literary connections, themes, symbolism, and cultural and social references underlying The Silver Chair and The Horse and His BoyIn Signs Among the Stones, Jem Bloomfield explores the literary landscapes of The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy, the fourth and fifth books in C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia se...

Reading Shakespeare through a Christian LensNot only huge English literature fans or apologetics aficionados will be delighted by this special Advent issue of An Unexpected Journal. The aim is to interest the scholar, yes, but also the general reader who has no special knowledge of English literature, Shakespeare, or apologetics.The defense of the Christian faith believes that no domain of human experience. All areas, including the history of ideas political, philosophical,...

This study argues that allusion is a central part of classic British detective fiction. It demonstrates the fraught status of Shakespeare and the Bible during the Golden Age of the British detective novel, and the cultural currents which novelists navigated whilst alluding to them. The first part traces the complex web of allusions to Shakespeare and the Bible which appear in the novels of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, examining the meanings these allusions produce. The second par...