Linguaculture, Volume 5, Number 2, 2014
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Michael Ward
University of Oxford, England, UK
Jane Hipolito
California State University, Fullerton, USA
Abstract & Keywords
For C. S. Lewis, the walks that he took each Easter tide with Owen Barfield, Walter O. Field, and Cecil Harwood epitomized friendship. Although they were distinctly unlike in personality and were not all interested in the same things, the four “cretaceous perambulators” shared core ideals and aspirations. Their writings evidence the wonderful strengths of their friendship.
Keywords: Barfield, Field, friendship, Great War, Harwood, Lewis
Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson
Independent Scholar, Ottawa, Canada
Abstract & Keywords
This paper is a conversational reassessment of George MacDonald, the Victorian fantasist who so profoundly shaped such writers as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Primary research challenges the common portrayal of MacDonald as an accidental novelist, revealing instead his clear trajectory and vocation as a devoted literary scholar. Clarifying the definition of mythopoeic as applied by the Oxford Inklings to MacDonald draws attention to their conviction that attentive response to one’s literary roots is what engenders novel literature with transformative potential. Further research proves this to be in keeping with the work and legacy of MacDonald and his mentor A.J. Scott. An intentional participation in this relational nature of literary tradition is a crucial element of the work and legacy to which the Inklings and their successors are heirs.
Keywords: George MacDonald; mythopoeic; fantasy; imagination; Tolkien; CS Lewis; AJ Scott; English literature; Barfield; Sidney; Dante
Helen Cooper
Magdalene College, Cambridge, England, UK
Abstract & Keywords
C.S. Lewis’s life as an academic was concerned with the teaching of medieval and Renaissance literature, though both his lectures and his publications also incorporated his extensive knowledge of Greek and Latin classics. He argued that the cultural and intellectual history of Europe was divided into three main periods, the pre-Christian, the Christian and the post-Christian, which he treated as a matter of historical understanding and with no aim at proselytization: a position that none the less aroused some opposition following his inaugural lecture as professor at Cambridge. Ever since his childhood, his interest in the Middle Ages had been an imaginative rather than a purely scholarly one, and his main concern was to inculcate a sense of the beauty of that pre-modern thought world and its value - a concern that set him apart from the other schools of English language and literature dominant in his lifetime.
Keywords: C.S. Lewis, medieval literature, Renaissance literature
Dănuț Mănăstireanu
World Vision International
Abstract & Keywords
After some passing considerations on the reception of Lewis in Romania, the present paper discusses the role played by Anglicanism in the late personal commitment of C.S. Lewis to the Christian faith, after years of atheism, scepticism, and agnosticism. It argues that in fact Anglicanism contributed very little to Lewis’s (re) conversion to Christianity. Furthermore, the paper agrees with the generally accepted idea that the particular calling that Lewis felt he had, that of being a Christian apologist, made him wary of being associated with the defence of any specific Christian tradition. In virtue of this special calling, Lewis also reacted quite strongly against certain aspects of Anglicanism, like, for instance, the ordination of women to priesthood, which he perceived as an obstacle to ecumenism and, implicitly, to an effective defence of the Christian faith in the public arena. In spite of all this, there is little doubt that Lewis has fully and unreservedly adopted Anglicanis m as his preferred version of Christianity. From this particular stance, the life and ministry of C.S. Lewis made a huge public impact in the twentieth century and beyond. In light of the undeniable influence he had on the intellectual and religious scene in the last hundred years, one may ask not so much how Anglican was Lewis, but, rather, ‘why isn’t Anglicanism more like Lewis’
Keywords: Anglican, theology, apologetics, ecumenism, women ordination
Joel D. Heck
Concordia University, Texas, USA
Abstract & Keywords
C. S. Lewis once stated that the decline of classical learning was a contributory cause of atheism. This article explores why he made this very unusual statement, describing how Lewis saw the Classics as a literature full of gods and goddesses, providing hints of truth, giving us things to write about, and preparing for the Christian faith. Using some remarkable quotations from Virgil and Plato, Lewis demonstrated how those writers anticipated both the birth and the death of Christ. Lewis’s concept of myth, powerfully present in the Classics, shows how the Gospel story itself is a “true myth,” one with a pattern that is similar to many of the pagan myths. The personal story of Lewis himself demonstrates how the Classics, and, more broadly, the liberal arts were a testimony to the truth of God and how the Greek plays of Euripides, the philosophy of Samuel Alexander, the imagination of writer William Morris, the poetry of George Herbert, and the historical sensibility of G. K. Chesterton combined (with many other similar influences) to convince Lewis that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ were especially a “true myth,” one that happened in history, demonstrating him to be the Son of God.
Keywords: atheism, classical learning, the Classics, conversion, patron saint, liberal arts, myth
Teodora Ghivirigă
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania
Abstract & Keywords
The paper discusses C. S. Lewis’ position on, and criticism of, magic vs. wisdom and the type of “fast” magic that the (post-)modern world has fallen prey to and ends by returning to the alternative that Lewis - and other writers such as his friend and contemporary J. R. R. Tolkien and more recent ones such as Tery Pratchett - suggest as a more propitious alternative.
Keywords: deep magic, modern magic, science, wisdom
Till Kinzel
Technical Institute of Berlin, Germany
Abstract & Keywords
C. S. Lewis was one of the major scholars of literature in the 20th century. His contribution to the art of reading deserves a re-consideration and is therefore reconstructed and analysed in this paper. Topcis that are highlighted in this connection are the types of literary scholarship most useful t o a proper understanding of old texts, the types of readers that exist, the controversies in which Lewis engaged concerning the interpretation of Milton, the importance of philological knowledge for literary scholars as well as the pitfalls of literary criticism. In many respects, C. S. Lewis is at odds with currently fashionable approaches to literature - and thus provides a welcome challenge to dominant paradigms of reading texts.
Keywords: pleasures of the text, hermeneutics, literary theory, literary scholarship, literary criticism, types of readers, storytelling, Milton criticism
Laura Carmen Cuțitaru
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania
Abstract & Keywords
The paper highlights common or divergent points in the way in which the concept of ”joy” is reflected in two masterpieces of Christian literature: Surprised by Joy (C. S. Lewis) and The Diary of Happiness (N. Steinhardt).
Keywords: joy, happiness, Sehnsucht, Christianity, Orthodox Christian tradition
Daniela Vasiliu
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iasi, Romania
Abstract & Keywords
The paper “C. S. Lewis: The Romantic Rationalist” presents the way C. S. Lewis gives an account in his first fictional (allegorical) book,The Pilgrim’s Regress, of how he discovered Christianity on the converging paths of romanticism and rationalism. The outstanding scholar and author whose intellectual and spiritual development has turned him into one of the most influential Christian writers of the twentieth century became an atheist in his teens and after a long journey through different philosophical convictions he converted to Christianity in his early thirties, a change that affected his entire work. His love of literature was essential in discovering both the rational and the imaginative appeal of Christianity, which led him into a vision of the reality of the world and of life that satisfied the longing of his heart and the hunger of his imagination.
Keywords: C. S. Lewis, allegory, Romanticism, Rationalism, literature, philosophy, imagination, Christianity
Emanuel Conțac
Pentecostal Theological Institute of Bucharest, Romania
Abstract & Keywords
This paper presents the circumstances surrounding the publication of the Romanian translations of C. S. Lewis’s best known works. In the first part, the author gives information about the Romanian authors who were acquainted with Lewis’s writings during Communism, when the translation and printing of books on religious topics was under the tight control of a totalitarian government. In spite of that control, two Lewis titles— The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Mere Christianity —which were translated in the US, were smuggled into Romania. The second part of this paper deals with the remarkably changed situation after the emergence of a new regime in 1990. Since then Lewis’s books have been published, often in multiple print runs, by secular as well as Christian publishers, with a total of 12 fiction and 13 non-fiction titles, indicating a wide popular reception of his work
Keywords: C. S. Lewis, reception history, C. S. Lewis in Romanian, Iosif Țon, Andrei Pleșu
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