I found another imagination book! The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing looks very interesting. It is a collection of essays, edited by Leland Ryken, that covers a wide variety of material.
There are contemporary essays, as well as “viewpoints” from notable figures, including CS Lewis, Jacques Maritain, Clyde Kilby, Denise Levertov, etc. Additionally, there are previously available essays by the likes of Flannery O’Connor and TS Eliot added into a nice structure with the others.
The ten parts:
- A Christian Philosophy of Literature
- Imagination, Beauty, and Creativity
- To Teach and Delight
- The Christian Writer
- The Christian Reader
- State of the Art: Success and Failure in Current Christian Fiction and Poetry
- Realism
- Myth and Fantasy
- Poetry
- Narrative
And, you know how other books are sometimes listed before the title page? They look pretty good, too! Leland Ryken has also worked on The Discerning Reader: Essays on Christian Literary Criticism, Realms of Gold: The Classics in Christian Perspective, The Liberated Imagination: Thinking Christianly About the Arts, Triumphs of the Imagination, and more on other topics.
Obviously, the contributors come from a spectrum of denominations, but our own Gene Edward Veith is included, much to my delight. (Though it looks like his Amazon author page is incomplete, too. Hmm. Amazon, you’re letting me down!)
So, without further ado, another imagination book for your consideration: