BOOKS AND LETTERS

BOOKS AND LETTERS

Fiends, Freaks, and Fantasy

An Unsettling Reflection of the West's Decadent Soul

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Scott Postma
Oct 07, 2023
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For some time now, I have been writing about the Christian humanist use of the grotesque in the literature of C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, and J. R. R. Tolkien. I have argued that Lewis’s fiends, O’Connor’s freaks, and Tolkien’s fantastical monsters have more transcendent significance than merely entertaining their audiences with horror or disturbing…

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