Celestial Nonsense: George Macdonald’s Apophatic Play

Abstract

Abstract This article seeks to expand the boundaries of literary nonsense to include more overtly theological writers like George MacDonald. According to most critics of nonsense, God and religion are ‘absolutely forbidden’ from the genre, but the reasons for this exclusion are never demonstrated and seem to be based on taste rather than evidence. After defining the key features of nonsense as play, paradox, and transgression, the article notes a surprising overlap between these features and the traditional characteristics of Western apophaticism. It then explores the structure and style of what G.K. Chesterton calls MacDonald’s ‘celestial nonsense’. With a focus on At the Back of the North Wind and frequent comparisons to other children’s fantasies (particularly Lewis Carroll’s Alice books), the article argues that MacDonald intuits the affinity between nonsense and apophaticism to develop his seraphic style. This style is unashamedly ‘childlike’, a paradoxical and embarrassing blend of silly gravity and solemn levity. The conclusion then gestures to how others (Elizabeth Sewell, Chesterton, Christina Rossetti, J.R.R. Tolkien) might also be profitably considered writers of ‘celestial nonsense’.