Richard Allen

Salem Goldworth Bland (1859-1950) was among the most significant religious leaders in Canadian history. A Methodist and, later, United Church minister, Bland's long career and widespread influence made him a leading figure in the popularizing of liberal theology, social reform, and the Social Gospel movement. He was also a man who struggled with the polarities of evangelical faith and worldly culture, and who sought a unifying world-view in the mentoring of Sir J. William Dawson in the sciences, George Monro Grant in public affairs, and John Watson in philosophy. The View from the Murney Tower is a two-volume biography of Salem Bland by Richard Allen, author of The Social Passion: Religion and Reform in Canada, 1914-28. This first volume begins with Bland's upbringing in the home of an educated industrialist turned preacher. It goes on to explore his emergence as a liberating mind and eloquent speaker prepared to support new currents of scientific and social thought, as well as to discuss their implications for Christian faith and life. Allen concludes this first volume with Bland's departure from central Canada for the west in 1903, by which time he had become a somewhat controversial figure amongst conservative evangelicals throughout the country. More than just biography, however, The View from the Murney Tower is also an examination of progressive religion in late-Victorian Canada, a time in which Darwinism and other Biblical, social, and intellectual controversies were profoundly affecting the growth of a young nation.

Is Hitchcock a superficial, though brilliant, entertainer or a moralist? Do his films celebrate the ideal of romantic love or subvert it? In a new interpretation of the director's work, Richard Allen argues that Hitchcock orchestrates the narrative and stylistic idioms of popular cinema to at once celebrate and subvert the ideal of romance and to forge a distinctive worldview-the amoral outlook of the romantic ironist or aesthete. He describes in detail how Hitchcock's characteristic tone is achieved through a titillating combination of suspense and black humor that subverts the moral framework of the romantic thriller, and a meticulous approach to visual style that articulates the lure of human perversity even as the ideal of romance is being deliriously affirmed. Discussing more than thirty films from the director's English and American periods, Allen explores the filmmaker's adoption of the idioms of late romanticism, his orchestration of narrative point of view and suspense, and his distinctive visual strategies of aestheticism and expressionism and surrealism.

Is Hitchcock a superficial, though brilliant, entertainer or a moralist? Do his films celebrate the ideal of romantic love or subvert it? In a new interpretation of the director's work, Richard Allen argues that Hitchcock orchestrates the narrative and stylistic idioms of popular cinema to at once celebrate and subvert the ideal of romance and to forge a distinctive worldview-the amoral outlook of the romantic ironist or aesthete. He describes in detail how Hitchcock's characteristic tone is achieved through a titillating combination of suspense and black humor that subverts the moral framework of the romantic thriller, and a meticulous approach to visual style that articulates the lure of human perversity even as the ideal of romance is being deliriously affirmed. Discussing more than thirty films from the director's English and American periods, Allen explores the filmmaker's adoption of the idioms of late romanticism, his orchestration of narrative point of view and suspense, and his distinctive visual strategies of aestheticism and expressionism and surrealism.

The Society of Friends (Quakers) originated in the turmoil of the Civil War years and Interregnum. Examining Friends in Wales, especially in Monmouthshire in the period 1654-1836, this book assesses the lives of Friends, notably how education, careers, and marriage, were determined by a code of conduct.

Projecting Illusion offers a systematic analysis of the impression of reality in the cinema and the pleasure it gives to the film spectator. Film provides a compelling experience that can be considered as a form of illusion akin to the experience of day-dream and dream. Examining the concept of illusion and its relationship to fantasy in the experience of visual representation, Richard Allen situates his explanation within the context of an analytical criticism of contemporary film and critical theory. He argues that many contemporary film theorists correctly identify the significance of the impression of reality, although their explanation of it is incorrect because of an invalid philosophical understanding of the relationship between the mind, representation and reality. Offering a clear presentation and critique of the central arguments of contemporary film and critical theory, Allen also touches on fundamental issues in current discourses of philosophy, art history and feminist theory.