STEPHEN R. DONALDSON, the American novelist, received an honorary doctorate yesterday at the University of St. Andrews. I have mentioned Donaldson's work here (and follow the links back) and here. I gave the laureation address in the graduation ceremony and I reproduce it below. More here (and click on image below for a larger version*).

Vice Chancellor, it is my privilege to present the American novelist Stephen R Donaldson for the Degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa.

Stephen R Donaldson was born in 1947 in Cleveland Ohio. He lived in India as a child, where his father served as a medical missionary, returning to the United States in 1963. His father's work with "lepers," victims of the non-fatal but debilitating and disfiguring disease called Hansen's Syndrome, had an enormous influence on Stephen's later work as a writer. He earned a bachelor's degree at the College of Wooster in Ohio and an MA in English at Kent State University, then performed hospital work for two years as a conscientious objector during the Viet Nam War. Shortly afterward he became a full-time writer of fiction.

Epic fantasy is a genre that has traditionally been looked down upon in the literary and academic worlds. Strange that this should be so, given that epic is one of the most venerable genres of literature, extending back through Milton, Beowulf, Virgil, and Homer to some of the earliest preserved Sumerian literary texts about Gilgamesh the king. And epic is itself a form of fantasy literature, which Stephen Donaldson has lucidly defined as literature in which the internal conflicts of the characters are externalised in the form of monsters, magical forces, and realms not found on this earth. The importance of such literature has been finding increasing appreciation in the academic world, not least through the efforts of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts at the University of St Andrews, which sponsors much research in this area. And the sheer literary quality of Stephen Donaldson's work has challenged the mainstream literary world to recognise the vital contribution of this genre.

Stephen Donaldson is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning writer who over more than thirty years has published nineteen novels and two collections of short stories. He is best know for his eight (of a projected ten) novels in the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, an epic fantasy series that has been compared to the work of Tolkien, but which immediately separated itself from the mass of Tolkien clones as a creative contribution to the genre that set its own agenda and attained a literary standard that equals if not surpasses Tolkien. (The Washington Post said that it was "comparable to Tolkien at his best.") The story was inspired by the work of Donaldson's father with lepers in India and it centres on a contemporary man in small-town America (Thomas Covenant) who unexpectedly contracts Hansen's Syndrome and abruptly finds himself an outcast and pariah in his own life. Covenant is mysteriously translated to another world in which he is cured of his illness and is regarded as a saviour figure with tremendous magical powers. But he cannot permit himself to believe in this reality because it defies the cardinal principle of his life as a leper: that there is no cure, that dead nerves don't regenerate, and that allowing any hope to relax his self-discipline risks injury, disfigurement and destruction. He cannot dare to believe in his own powers or use them to save this magical realm from its satanic adversary. This twist of placing a tormented twentieth-century man in an epic fantasy world where his inner conflicts have been transformed into monstrous external threats and heroic external champions has been a significant force for reclaiming fantasy as a contribution to mainstream fiction. The series explores themes of alienation, personal responsibility, power and its corruption, guilt, and hope, while telling a gripping and highly original tale. It introduces a new, beautiful, and threatened world and then explores its collective consciousness, reaching an imaginative and aesthetic level of world-creation and a depth of psychological and philosophical insight that brought a new level of credibility to the genre of fantasy.

Besides the Thomas Covenant books, Stephen Donaldson has published another two-volume fantasy series, an additional two volumes of short stories, a five-volume science fiction series known as The Gap Cycle, and the four detective novels in The Man Who ... series. Stephen Donaldson's work creatively explores important moral and theological issues such as human destiny and free will, the inherent limitations of power, the subjective and objective dimensions of evil, and the destructive power of self-hatred.

Stephen Donaldson is one of the most highly regarded living writers of fantasy and he has won numerous awards in this area. His science fiction and detective novels have also consistently challenged the boundaries of the genres and have been very well received and successful. But the success and recognition of his work extend far beyond the confines of the audience of genre literature. Eight of his books, including the most recent one, have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List and one of them (White Gold Wielder in the Thomas Covenant series) was the eighth bestselling book of 1983 (just after Eco's The Name of the Rose). The second volume in this current series, Fatal Revenant, was published in October of 2007 and reached number twelve on the New York Times Bestseller List for hardback fiction. No other living writer of fantasy has achieved this level of acclaim in both genre and mainstream literary circles.

Stephen Donaldson currently lives in New Mexico, where he is writing the third volume of The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Vice Chancellor, in recognition of his exceptional contribution to literature, I invite you to confer on Stephen R Donaldson the Degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa.

*Photograph copyright 2009, Mary Stevens. Used with gratitude by permission.