Tag Archives: His Dark Materials

Pullman and Dante on the Afterlife

By Robin Bates | Published: July 15, 2023

Pullman, drawing on Dante, provides one of the most sustaining accounts of the afterlife that I know.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Adonais", "Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep", "Upon Nothing", "World", Afterlife, Amber Spyglass, death and dying, Fragment of Seneca Translated, Henry Vaughan, John Donne, John Wilmot, Mary Elizabeth Frye, Percy Shelley, Philip Pullman, Satyr on Reason and Mankind | Comments closed

On Lent, Dust, and His Dark Materials

By Robin Bates | Published: March 4, 2023

In Practical Christianity, Jane Shaw uses Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” to discuss how to grapple with life and sin.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Coming of Age, Jane Shaw, Lent, Philip Pullman, Practical Christianity | Comments closed

Angels in Pullman’s Fantasy

By Robin Bates | Published: June 7, 2022

In “His Dark Materials” Pullman turns Milton’s “Paradise Lost” on its head. The fallen angels are the good guys.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged angels, Fundamentalism, Milton, Paradise Lost, Philip Pullman | Comments closed

Fantasy, a Portal to the Numinous

By Robin Bates | Published: March 26, 2017

People are often drawn to fantasy in our post-Enlightenment world because they hunger for the numinous.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Crystal Forest", alienation, angels, Beauty and the Beast, Charles Taylor, disenchantment, Enlightenment, fantasy, Georg Lukacs, Harmut Rosa, Homer, John Milton, Odyssey, Paradise Lost, Philip Pullman, re-enchantment, resonance, Theory of the Novel, Willam Sharp | Comments closed

A Debate about Sex, Pullman vs. Milton

By Robin Bates | Published: April 2, 2016

This is the 20th anniversary of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series, which gives me an excuse for once again tilting with the fantasy author and figuring out my own thoughts on our vexed relationship with sexuality and our bodies. Once again I conclude that Milton goes far deeper into these issues than Pullman does.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Boom!", Christianity, Everyman, Howard Nemerov, John Milton, Philip Pullman, Sin | Comments closed

Pullman vs. C. S. Lewis on the Issue of Sin

By Robin Bates | Published: February 20, 2016

Philip Pullman loathes C. S. Lewis, despite the many similarities between “The Golden Compass” and the Narnia Chronicles. The reason may be the way handles sinning children.