Readers of Philip Pullman’s trilogiesHis Dark Materials andThe Book of Dust know that these novels speculate on parallel worlds and multiple spatial dimensions. But how do they also consider questions of time and history? Kristen Poole explores Pullman’s engagement with history in her bookPhilip Pullman and the Historical Imagination: Seventeenth-Century Literature,Science, and Religion in His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust. In particular, she shows how Pullman draws theoretical ideas and narrative modes from the fascinating period of early modern England. As a storyteller, Pullman takes up concerns about meaning, language, and interpretation in ways that echo various philosophies of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Pullman’s curiosity about science and contemporary theoretical physics leads him to weave elements into his stories that bear striking parallels to various developments of the early scientific revolution. And as a writer keenly attuned to the poetics of John Milton and the narrative structures of Edmund Spenser, Pullman shares these authors’ investment in the sounds of language and the shape of plot and character.

In this conversation, Kristen Poole and Philip Pullman will discuss the influence of seventeenth-century ideas on His Dark Materials andThe Book of Dust. How do early modern emblem books prompt ideas about what it means to read and interpret? What is Pullman’s particular attraction to this period of history? How do ideas about alchemy enter his stories, introducing philosophies about matter and our place in the universe (or multiverse)? What prompted the shift from Milton to Spenser as inspiration for the first and second trilogies? In addition to considering how Pullman drew from the early modern in crafting his novels, we will also think about how the ideas in the novels help us to see the past in a new light, recognizing the two-way traffic of history and story.

The conversation will be moderated by David Fickling, Philip Pullman’s publisher.

Kristen Poole

Kristen Poole is a scholar of early modern English literature whose research focuses on the nexus of literature, religion, and the history of science. She has published extensively on Shakespeare and Milton. She received a Ph.D. from Harvard and a Master of Sacred Theology from United Lutheran Seminary, Philadelphia. She holds the Ned B. Allen Professor of English at the University of Delaware (USA) and is currently a Visiting Fellow at Exeter College, Oxford.

Philip Pullman

Sir Philip Pullman is the author of the award-winning trilogy of novels His Dark Materials, which have been adapted for stage, screen, and graphic novels. The third volume of the companion series,The Book of Dust, will be coming out later this year. His other writings include the Sally Lockhart mysteries and his collection of essays Dæmon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling.

He was the 2023 recipient of the Bodley Medal.

Kristen Poole with Philip Pullman and David Fickling