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ix s Contents Introduction: The Gravity of a Child at Play 1 Part I: Modalities of Levity 1 The Levity of Saints and Angels 9 2 Ecstasy and Folly 23 Lightening the Self for Its Journey 3 Vanity and Play 37 Liberation from Seriousness for Metamorphosis 4 Carnival and Sabbath 51 ATime for Renewal, Rebellion, and Revelation Part II: MacDonald’s Fairytale Levity 5 “Never so Real as When They Are Solemn” 71 Victorians and Seriousness 6 Time 107 Fairyland’s Festive Sabbath 7 Space 143 Fairyland’s Ecstatic Cosmology 8 Transformation 173 “Shall not the Possible Become the Real?” s x Contents Conclusion: The Haunting Force of Levity 203 Notes 209 Bibliography 245 Index 257 ...

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