Fantasy Literature and Christianity

The on-going 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 the readers’ concern over the portrayal of religion in fantasy. Yet while the works of Lewis, Tolkien, Pullman, and Rowling have been discussed in excess, other fantasy series have so far received markedly less attention. Thus, the following book offers a critical study of the fantastic religions and religious themes present in the works of selected American and Canadian writers: Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Guy Gavriel Kay’s Fionavar Tapestry, Celia S. Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy, and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. The aim of the proposed study is to reveal and investigate these series’ references to biblical tradition and Christian teachings in order to examine their overall approach to Christianity and to comment on the relationship between Christianity and the fantasy genre. The study is conducted in reference to the theories and methods designed by the discipline of the phenomenology of religion.