Influences
Pullman has identified three major literary influences on His Dark Materials: the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist, the works of William Blake, and, most important, John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy derives its title.
Pullman had the stated intention of inverting Milton's story of a war between heaven and hell, such that the devil would appear as the hero. In his introduction, he adapts a famous description of Milton by Blake to quip that he (Pullman) "is of the Devil's party and does know it." Pullman also referred to gnostic ideas in his description of the novels' underlying mythic structure.
The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of books by C. S. Lewis, appears to have had a negative influence on Pullman's trilogy. Pullman has characterised C. S. Lewis's series as "blatantly racist", "monumentally disparaging of women", "immoral", and "evil". However, some critics have compared the trilogy with such fantasy books as Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle as well as the Narnia series.
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