Author: Philip Zaleski
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374713790
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 657
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Book Description
C. S. Lewis is the 20th century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times. In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years-and did so in dazzling style.
Author: Charles Williams
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873387125
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
These letters to "Michal," Williams endearing name for his wife, from "Serge," a moniker by which his most intimate friends addressed him, are more than just a collection of love letters--they are significant for what they tell us about the man, for the light they throw on his work, and for the way they show Williams in the context of his literary contemporaries (C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Dorothy L. Sayers, Christopher Fry, and Edith Sitwell). In fact, Williams felt that T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis were the only two people other than his wife to whom he could talk seriously about important matters
Author: Harry Lee Poe
Publisher: Crossway
ISBN: 1433567865
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
Experience C. S. Lewis's Captivating Transformation from Atheist to Christian At the end of World War I, young C. S. Lewis was a devout atheist about to begin his studies at Oxford. In the three decades that followed, he would establish himself as one of the most influential writers and scholars of modern times, undergoing a radical conversion to Christianity that would transform his life and his work. Scholar Harry Lee Poe unfolds these watershed years in Lewis's life, offering readers a unique perspective on his conversion, his friendships with well-known Christians such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Dorothy L. Sayers, and his development from an opponent of Christianity to one of its most ardent defenders.
Author: Christopher Scarf
Publisher: James Clarke & Company
ISBN: 0227901940
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 203
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Book Description
In his distinctive work, Christopher Scarf explores the writings of the three most prominent Oxford Inklings - Charles Williams (1886-1945), C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), and J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) - to reveal and contrast their conceptions of the ideal of 'kingship'; divine, human, and mythological. As practising Christians, the faith of all three writers was central to their literary and personal visions of kingship, society, love, beauty, justice and power. Scarf investigates their beliefin God as Creator and heavenly King, opinions on the nature of His very being, and the way in which all believed the Creator to be unique rather than one among many. The relationship between the earthly and heavenly King is considered, as well as the extent to which the writers contend that earthly kings are God's viceregents, act with His authority, and are duty-bound to establish and sustain just and joyous societies. Examining the writings of all three men in detail, Scarf also highlights the covert evidence of their lives and personalities which may be discovered in their texts. An understanding of the authors' individual but overlapping views of the essential meaning of Kingship, and their personalities and early lives, will enrichthe reader's appreciation of their created worlds. This volume provides a unique focus on Kingship and the Christian beliefs of three well-loved writers, and will be of interest to any reader seeking a fuller understanding of the individuals and their works.
Author: Aren Roukema
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004369112
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
Esotericism and Narrative: The Occult Fiction of Charles Williams situates the life and fiction of the Inkling Charles Williams in the network of modern occultism, with special focus on his initiatory experiences in A.E. Waite’s Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. Aren Roukema evaluates fictional projections of magic, kabbalah, alchemy and ritual experience in Williams’s seven novels of supernatural fantasy. From this specific analysis, he develops more broadly applicable approaches to the serious expression of religious experience in fiction. Roukema shows that esoteric knowledge has frequently been blurred into fiction because of its inherent narrativity and adaptability, particularly by authors already attracted to the syncretism, multivalence and lived fantasy of the modern occult experience.
Author: Bruce L. Edwards
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313082081
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 1398
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Book Description
Most popularly known as the author of the children's classic The Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis was also a prolific poet, essayist, novelist, and Christian writer. His most famous work, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, while known as a children's book is often read as a Christian allegory and remains to this day one of his best-loved works. But Lewis was prolific in a number of areas, including poetry, Christian writing, literary criticism, letters, memoir, autobiography, sermons and more. This set, written by experts, guides readers to a better understanding and appreciation of this important and influential writer. Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His mother died when he was young, leaving his father to raise him and his older brother Warren. He fought and was wounded in World War I and later became immersed in the spiritual life of Christianity. While he delved into the world of Christian writing, he did not limit himself to one genre and produced a remarkable oeuvre that continues to be widely read, taught, and adored at all levels. As part of the circle known as the Inklings, which consisted of writers and intellectuals, and included J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and others, he developed and honed his skills and continued to put out extensive writings. Many different groups now claim him as their own: spanning genres from science fiction to Christian literature, from nonfiction to children's stories, his output remains among the most popular and complex. Here, experts in the field of Lewis studies examine all his works along with the details of his life and the culture in which he lived to give readers the fullest complete picture of the man, the writer, and the husband, alongside his works, his legacy, and his place in English letters.
Author: Karina Jakubowicz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000359166
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 227
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Book Description
This book explores the shifting and negotiated boundaries of religion, spirituality, and secular thinking in Britain and North America during the twentieth century. It contributes to a growing scholarship that problematises secularization theory, arguing that religion and spirituality increasingly took diverse new forms and identities, rather than simply being replaced by a monolithic secularity. The volume examines the way that thinkers, writers, and artists manipulated and reimagined orthodox belief systems in their work, using the notion of heresy to delineate the borders of what was considered socially and ethically acceptable. It includes topics such as psychospiritual approaches in medicine, countercultures and religious experience, and the function of blasphemy within supposedly secular politics. The book argues that heresy and heretical identities established fluid borderlands. These borderlands not only blur simple demarcations of the religious and secular in the twentieth century, but also infer new forms of heterodoxy through an exchange of ideas. This collection of essays offers a nuanced take on a topic that pervades the study of religion. It will be of great use to scholars of Heresy Studies, Religious Studies and Comparative Religion, Social Anthropology, History, Literature, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies.
Author: Richard Sturch
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443815551
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 162
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Book Description
Charles Williams (1886-1945), poet, novelist, critic, biographer, lay theologian, and 'Inkling'; exercised a great influence, both as a personality and through his writings, on English letters in his own day; and now, after a period of relative neglect, interest in him has grown once more. This international symposium, a product of this revival, is presented as a contribution to the serious study of Williams and his work. Its contents reflect not only the extraordinarily wide range of his writing, but also the many contacts he made both personally and through his work at the Oxford University Press. Contributors look at his literary background and context, describe the part he played in introducing Kierkegaard to the English-speaking public, discuss his theology of love, and compare his work with that of friends, disciples and associates. Two papers concentrate specifically on one of his remarkable novels, The Place of the Lion. Between them, they give a glimpse, or a series of glimpses, of an unusual man and a fascinating writer whose influence and importance are being recognized more and more.
Author: Diana Glyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
The creators of 'Narnia' and 'Middle Earth', C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien were friends and colleagues. They met with a community of fellow writers at Oxford in the 1930s and 1940s, the group known as the Inklings. This study challenges the standard interpretation that the Inklings had little influence on one another's work.
Author: Paul S. Fiddes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192845462
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 431
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Book Description
This study of the literary relationship between Charles Williams and C. S. Lewis during the years 1936-1945 focuses on the theme of 'co-inherence' at the centre of their friendship. The idea of 'co-inherence' has long been recognized as an important contribution of Williams to theology, and had significant influence on the thought of Lewis. This account of the two writers' conviction that human persons 'inhere' or 'dwell' both in each other and in the triune God reveals many inter-relationships between their writings that would otherwise be missed. It also shows up profound differences between their world-views, and a gradual, though incomplete, convergence onto common ground. Exploring the idea of co-inherence throws light on the fictional worlds they created, as well as on their treatment (whether together or separately) of a wide range of theological and literary subjects: the Arthurian tradition, the poetry of William Blake and Thomas Traherne, the theology of Karl Barth, the nature of human and divine love, and the doctrine of the Trinity. This study draws for the first time on transcriptions of Williams' lectures from 1932 to 1939, tracing more clearly the development and use of the idea of co-inherence in his thought than has been possible before. Finally, an account of the use of the word 'co-inherence' in English-speaking theology suggests that the differences that existed between Lewis and Williams, especially on the place of analogy and participation in human experience of God, might be resolved by a theology of co-inherence in the Trinity.
