2006 Lionel Basney Award

Scott McLaren, for his essay
“Saving the Monsters? Images of Redemption in the Gothic Tales of George MacDonald,”
Volume 55 Issue 2 (Winter 2006), pp. 245-269.

Text of Citation

"The publications committee is pleased to grant this year’s Lionel Basney award for the best uncommissioned article published in volume 55 of Christianity and Literature to Scott McLaren, for his essay “Saving the Monsters? Images of Redemption in the Gothic Tales of George MacDonald” 55.2 (Winter 2006): 245-269.

McLaren presents a fascinating study of the ways in which George MacDonald’s theological beliefs, especially his belief in universal salvation, caused him to alter the moral economy of the Victorian Gothic genre. Through well-written close readings of MacDonald’s gothic stories, McLaren persuasively demonstrates that, unlike other gothic works, “MacDonald’s stories allow not only for the escape of the protagonist but also leave room for the repentance and ultimate salvation of the antagonist,” just as in MacDonald’s theology, God leaves room for the repentance and redemption of all people, even after death. Placing MacDonald’s gothic tales in their historical and religious contexts, McLaren deftly elucidates the aesthetic implications of a given theological position."

2006 Publications Committee
Brian D. Ingraffia, chair, Calvin College
Phillip J. Donnelly, Baylor University
Susan Felch, Calvin College, ad hoc reader
David Urban, Calvin College, ad hoc reader
(Additional readers were used on an ad hoc basis--i.e., to help adjudicate among finalists for the Basney award--after the committee lost its third member.)

The committee also reported on finalists for the Basney award:

Finalists for the award also included Shannon Hartling’s essay, “Inexpressible Sadness: Sterne’s Sermons and the Moral Inadequacies of Politeness in Tristram Shandy,” which presents a sharply-focused exploration of how the details of theological belief and aesthetic form impinge upon one another in a given work of literature; and Sue Starke’s essay, “‘The Eternal Now’: Virgilian Echoes and Miltonic Premonitions in Cowley’s Davideis,” which does a fine job of looking back to Virgil and forward to Milton in order to analyze “Cowley’s blend of classical and Christian texts.”