SOURCE: “The Multiple Realms of George MacDonald's Phantastes,” in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. 29, 1996, pp. 174-90.

In the following essay, Gunther disagrees with the notion of dualism in MacDonald's writing, positing instead that his works explore multiple realms of spiritual and psychological reality.

Critics have often referred to George MacDonald's dualism. Recently a book has been published centered around this concept and opening with an essay entitled “The Two Worlds of George MacDonald.”¹ These two worlds are variously seen as those of “reality” and “fantasy”, of “intellect” and “imagination”, of the traditional and the personal, of the pagan and the Christian and so on. I would suggest that a more useful approach to the understanding of Phantastes, is to see it as the embodiment of multiple worlds, as a text whose subsuming vision may be seen to embrace, not two realms, but the possibility of an infinity thereof...