Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy

Related reading and listening

1. How fantasy restores the world — In this 2019 lecture, Alison Milbank shows how fantasy can help restore to us a vision of human flourishing that counters the atomization and meaninglessness of modern life. (43 minutes)
2. A regard for the whole person — FROM VOL. 16 Alan Jacobs discusses the clinical stories of neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose ability to bring out the dignity and personhood of his “characters” (patients) rivals that of many novelists. (11 minutes)
3. Immersion in a different time — FROM VOL. 17 Literary critic Alan Jacobs considers the author Patrick O’Brian as perhaps the best historical novelist ever. (13 minutes)
4. Jacobs, Alan — FROM THE GUEST PAGE: Alan Jacobs is Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University and a Senior Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture.
5. Bridges with structural flaws — FROM VOL. 4What made The Bridges of Madison County so popular, and so flawed? Alan Jacobs offers some insights. (14 minutes)
6. Faulkner’s tragic vision — Alan Jacobs describes how William Faulkner’s fiction explored the tragedy of living with a legacy of evil acts. (26 minutes)
7. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 153 — FEATURED GUESTS: Charles C. Camosy, O. Carter Snead, Matt Feeney, Margarita A. Mooney, Louis Markos, and Alan Jacobs
8. Mythopoeic power — Stratford Caldecott on Tolkien’s literary achievement
9. Echoes of Middle-earth — Holly Ordway describes the overwhelming influence that J. R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy The Lord of the Rings has had on the development of the fantasy genre in the past 50 years. (12 minutes)
10. On faithful fiction: Larry Woiwode, Alan Jacobs, & Jay Tolson — This Friday Feature represents three interviews on fiction from Volume 3: Larry Woiwode on what makes good fiction, Alan Jacobs on P. D. James’s The Children of Men, and Jay Tolson on Walker Percy. (29 minutes)
11. Christina Rossetti and George MacDonald revisited — Alan Jacobs talks about the theme of renunciation in Christina Rossetti’s poems, and Stephen Prickett looks at aspects of nineteenth-century Romanticism from which George MacDonald’s work emerges. (33 minutes)
12. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 142 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, Jeffrey Bishop, Alan Jacobs, D. C. Schindler, and Marianne Wright
13. C. S. Lewis on communities of thought — Alan Jacobs talks about C. S. Lewis’s two essays, “The Inner Ring” and “Membership” and how they explore the fact that all of our thinking is situated within relationships. (19 minutes)
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15. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 110 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kevin Belmonte, David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet, Mark Noll, Alan Jacobs, and Jonathan Chaplin
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17. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 100 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jennifer Burns, Christian Smith, Dallas Willard, Peter Kreeft, P. D. James, James Davison Hunter, Paul McHugh, Ted Prescott, Ed Knippers, Martha Bayles, Dominic Aquila, Gilbert Meilaender, Neil Postman, and Alan Jacobs
18. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 99 — FEATURED GUESTS: Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, Paul A. Rahe, James L. Nolan, Jr., Andrew J. Cherlin, Dale Keuhne, and Alison Milbank
19. Deadly Legacy: Alan Jacobs on Original Sin — Alan Jacobs discusses his book, Original Sin: A Cultural History, (2008) a survey of how beliefs about sin have affected literature, politics, music, education, and other spheres of human culture. (60 minutes)
20. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 93 — FEATURED GUESTS: Alan Jacobs, James A. Herrick, Robert C. Roberts, J. Daryl Charles, Allan C. Carlson, and Sheila O’Connor-Ambrose
21. Stronger than death — Alan Jacobs and Mark Shea defend the portrayal of magic in the Harry Potter books.
22. After irony — Richard Rorty’s tangled spiritual pilgrimage has origins in being the grandson of social gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch and the son of committed Leninists.
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26. Maker of Middle-earth — Tom Shippey, Joseph Pearce, and Ralph Wood examine J. R. R. Tolkien and his mythological Lord of the Rings trilogy to explore what makes Tolkien’s work resonant and a vessel for truth. (86 minutes)
27. Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 48 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jon Butler, Gary Cross, Zygmunt Bauman, Pico Iyer, Richard Stivers, Larry Woiwode, Alan Jacobs, and James Trott
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29. Decadent Immortals — What do Ann Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles have to say about human nature? Critic Alan Jacobs illuminates the deeper moral questions raised by Rice’s first novel, which she seems to abandon as the series evolves. (51 minutes)
30. The Public Poetry of W. H. Auden — Alan Jacobs explains why W. H. Auden returned to the Church after recognizing that liberal humanism had no answers to the problem of human evil. (58 minutes)