CS Lewis info

Hello everyone,

I am looking for any ONLINE info concerning CS Lewis. Preferably, we need academic papers, etc. I am looking for a friend here in Estonia who wants to write her Bachelor's thesis on Lewis.

Her plan is to show that although he is primarily a Christian writer, his works are useful for everyone, no matter their religious affiliation.

Does anyone have any idea where she can find anything? Being in Estonia makes it difficult to just run down to the local library, or even to use inter-library loan. It really needs to be either online or able to be sent via email.

Thanks,
clint

 

In another thread, when I mentioned the possibility of looking up a back issue of Christian History magazine, Angela Gilham mentioned that they are available on the web for a monthly charge. One of CH's past issues was on C. S. Lewis. CH includes pretty good bibliographies.

 

Here are a few places to start:

CS Lewis Foundation

Internet Public Library

Into the Wardrobe

 

Another resource would be the page of the late CS Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog (http://www.lindentree.org/). She wrote a number of interesting articles, and a rather amazing "guide" to Lewis' Pilgrim's Regress called, Finding the Landlord: A Guidebook to C.S. Lewis's Pilgrims' Regress.

I really enjoyed this book and her articles, although I've wondered for years if she had missed one thing: I have a feeling that "Old Mr. Halfways" is meant to represent Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, whose philosophy and beautiful poetry were popular at the time Lewis was writing this first of what were to be many Christian books.

Matt

 

There is a ton of information about CS Lewis on the web.

To find it, just copy-and-paste the following search string, exactly as shown below, into the Google search box:

• "cs lewis" OR "c s lewis" OR "c.s. lewis" OR "c. s. lewis"

and press the [Enter] key on your keyboard. Over 2,830,000 search results will be returned... or so it is as of this writing.

If you wish to confine your search to U.S. educational institution web sites, just modify the string to include site:.edu at its end, as in:

• "cs lewis" OR "c s lewis" OR "c.s. lewis" OR "c. s. lewis" site:.edu

Hope that helps!

 

Lewis wasn't half the man--or writer--that Rabindranath Tagore was. And Rabindranath wasn't half the intellectual reformer that Devandranath was.

 

I withheld posting that I really never cared for Lewis but didn't. Now, since Uncle has posted, I will say I never cared much for him.

I actually get more out of Gibran's The Prophet than any of Lewis' works.

Martin Buber was far superior to Lewis when it came to intellectualism.

 

I think Lewis was an excellent writer.

"Mere Christianity" is one of the finest books on apologetics ever written.

 

And with apologies to Jimmy (we can't agree on everything, old chap), "The Prophet" reads to me like a very poor man's Proverbs of Solomon.

 

I don't know. Certainly they were both geniuses. In terms of influence on their respective societies and sheer output, Rabindranath definitely surpassed Lewis, but in the context of the writing of Pilgrim's Regress, Britain in the early 1930's, Tagore was admired, but certainly not the towering figure he was in the context of India generally and Bengal in particular.

In South Asia, Rabindranath was and indeed remains huge: he was a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, social commmentary, drama, music and choreography. He founded one of the most prestigious universities in India, Viswa-Bharati University, and the national anthems of two South Asian countries (India and Bangladesh) are songs written by Rabindranath.

His father Devendranath was not all that much of an intellectual reformer; he comes down really more as something of a "bridge" figure between Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj whose leadership position fell to Debendranath following Roy's death in the UK, and Keshub Chandra Sen, the enigmatic leader who eventually took most of the Brahmo's with him into his reformist version of the Brahmo Samaj. Historically and perhaps philosophically as well, Debendranath is rather overshadowed by both of these figures.

Peace,

Matt

 

Vas den? I have always gotten a lot out of Lewis' fiction as well as his apologetics. I still can't read the "crucifixion" scene in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe without tears, and the allegory of the inward, mystical journey towards God as described in Voyage of the Dawn Treader is likewise astounding. His Platonic-MacDonald-Blake (some combo, nu?) riff in his The Great Divorce is as well simultaneously humerous and profound.

I like Lewis not only because of his ideas, but also because of the simply beautiful way he used the English language.

And if you want to diss him, Jimmy, everyone's mileage will vary. Buber, OK; certainly he had some interesting things to say. But Kahlil Gibran? Oy, de agony.... (;->

Peace,

Matt

 

Lewis has always made me vaguely ill, like eating too much marzipan or certain carnival rides. I recall a "spirituality" class (yes, kids, when the old Carpathian was much younger he consented to such blatherskite) for which we had to read "Till We Have Faeces". It was a voyage of self-discovery or some such nonsense. The middle-aged females and two guys with ponytails cried a lot. The ex-con in the class and I took turns kicking each other to stay awake. Another class forced us to read "Surprised by Goya" which struck me as the worst preening, candy-ass autobiography (and where WERE the paintings?) since Thomas "Zap" Merton's "Seven Storey Mandala", unless you think Malcolm Boyd's "Are You Running Over Me, Jesus?" was actually a book and not a really long, boring personals ad.

There. I feel much better now.

Jimmy: Buber 'n' Rosenzweig's German translation of the Tanakh is a whizbang.

 

Uncle J,

Y'know, I wanted to be ticked at you for your irreverence towards Lewis, except that I found it difficult to concentrate through my peals of laughter. I just can't handle the PUNishment on the book titles! (;->

I think you got one wrong, though; it was Surprised by Goyim, in which Lewis revealed his own secret Yiddishkeit in the midst of the Oxbridge atmosphere!

Peace and smiles,

Matt

 

Not familiar with this. Is there an English translation?

With all that I said about Lewis, I did enjoy the movie Shadowlands.

 

With profound hesitation and uncertainty I dip my Jewish toe into this very Christian debate concerning a very, very Christian writer...

but I've read Screwtape at LEAST five times and enjoyed howling laughter every time.

Then again, it could be that Screwtape appeals to me as a satire on bureauocracy, sot of like "Dilbert".

 

I'm a terrible punmeister. I'll leave that up to you language mavens. My father-in-law, who's been a professor for 30 years and is fluent or passable in many languages, modern and ancient, is also a pun meister. My guess is that those with inherent language ability (not I) or vast knowledge of languages (not I) have the upper hand there.

Anyway, after that preamble, let me say that I agree with you on Surpised by [insert favorite pun here]. I read it and thought: "This really isn't very good now, is it?" Like the doctor who self-medicates or the lawyer who represents himself (herself), some writers fall flat when they get introspective.

 

I'm no kind of Christian at all, but I have a high regard for C.S. Lewis as a fiction writer -- I've never been interested in any of his non-fiction. I enjoyed his Narnia books very much as a child, and have found that they age fairly well.

This might seem like a paradox, but I think what really gives the Narnia books such mass appeal is the imaginative quality of the non- or anti-Christian elements. Any epic fantasy needs good villains or it's just a dull exercise of good inexorably and predictably triumphing over evil. There are so many pervasive pagan elements in the Narnia books, ranging from the evil villains like the White Witch to more ambiguous figures like the races of dwarves, talking animals and man-eating giants... as a child I remember experiencing a great sense of wonder and unpredictability when reading the books. The Christian message was part of that, even though it never influenced me as Lewis might have intended.

 

I welcome your Jewish toe. In fact, I welcome you from Jewish toe right up to Jewish yarmulke.

I think Lewis was also--a la Jonathan Swift--slapping the bureaucracies of Nazis and/or Communists, with their intrigues, power plays and alternately obsequious (to superiors) and tyrannical (to inferiors) little bureaucrats.

I'm not saying that Screwtape wasn't mainly about what it was about--in fact, I'll bet Lewis considered those worldy institutions both inspired by and modeled upon the spiritual one--it's just that given the era in which it was written, it's hard to ignore other levels of meaning in the book.

And you're right, it is hilarious--and profound.

P.S.: You misspelled bureaucracy. But don't sweat it, last time I misspelled it, it on the chalk board last year while teaching American Government at the CC. One of my students--an athlete no less--corrected me with an intolerably smug grin on his face, class tittering the whole time--not a pretty scene.

 

Koan: It's not C.S. Lewis that bothers me, it's "C.S. Lewis" that bothers me

Best wishes to all of you. Somebody mentioned my "irreverence toward Lewis". Ya got me, pal. That's just it. Lewis as a writer may well have something worthwhile to say, somewhere, maybe. It's his status as totem that cracks me up. This is a great thread and I really appreciate what all of you have to say. All the best, J.

 

There's an awfully nice informal site, 11 yeas old now, at
http://cslewis.drzeus.net/

I guess I turned my Symbolism Firewall on while thoroughly enjoying The Chronicles of Narnia. I appreciate that everything in there probably stood for something else, but I didn't care at all. Just a fine story.

Incidentally, one of the best parodies I've read was published decades ago by Price/Stern/Sloan:
"The Profit" by Kellogg Allbran

--John Bear, soon to have my fifteen minutes of fame in Estonia. Well, an Estonian publisher has bought the Estonian rights to my book "How to Repair Food." 5,000 Estonian krooni will not mean a comfortable retirement, but it should buy some pretty good dinners in Tallinn.