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Home , Mere Christianity, The Allegory of Love, The Screwtape Letters

ENGL 2743 Studies in C. S. Lewis Fall 2009, Room 1001, Tuesdays & Thursdays, 1:00-2:15 p.m.

Instructor: Professor Elizabeth Davey Office: Rm. 2098 Phone: 416-226-6620 ext. 6713 E-mail: [email protected] Office Hours: Tuesdays, Thursdays; 10:00-11:00 a.m.; Wednesdays 1:00-4:00 p.m.; or by appointment

Commuter Hotline: 416-226-6620 ext. 2187 Class cancellations due to inclement weather or illness will be announced/posted on the commuter hotline.

Mailboxes: Every student is responsible for information communicated through the student mailboxes. A mailbox directory is posted beside the mailboxes. For more information contact the Registrar's office.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course is an exploration of the major theological and fiction works of C. S. Lewis. The ongoing tension between reason and imagination, informing both his life and his writing, is the major theme of discussion. Required readings include Mere , , , and (particularly The Magician’s Nephew and )..

Introduction: C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) was a university professor at Oxford and Cambridge and a reputable scholar in his field of medieval and Renaissance literature. His colleagues and contemporaries were far more interested in his literary theories than they were in his Christian , and they would have been more familiar with The of and Preface to Paradise Lost than The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce . In fact, he was an embarrassment to his fellow professors for his wartime radio talks which eventually became .

Nevertheless, Lewis is mostly known—and loved and frequently quoted—around the world for his popular Christian writings and it is to those that we give our primary attention in this course. Lewis is a skilled writer of diversity; he is an essayist, a lay- apologist, a satirist, a story-teller, a mythologist. His works can be both entertaining and challenging and call for disciplined reading on our parts.

Within this diversity we find common themes throughout Lewis’ writing. His Christian world view emerges as a refreshing and joyful contrast to the pessimistic picture many modern writers convey. The hope of —the realization of all our dreams and desires—pervades much of Lewis’ writing, making us ashamed of our earth-centredness. He insists that this hope of heaven is not a mere side benefit for the Christian. It is central and essential. Therefore, we must break the hold the world has on us. We don’t want to be making mud pies in the slums when infinite holidays at the sea are set out for us, he tells us in his famous sermon “The Weight of Glory.”

If Lewis does anything for you during the short time together this term as you immerse yourself in his thinking, he will help you look forward to heaven. With the Unicorn in The Last Battle when he entered heaven, you might exclaim:

I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.

COURSE OBJECTIVES • That you will have an introduction to the basic Christian writings of C. S. Lewis. • That you will be able to identify basic themes and emphases in Lewis’ work. • That you will demonstrate increased skill in reading literature as the term progresses; i.e., you will note significant detail, understand character, identify important themes with increased ease in our short week together! • That you will appreciate Lewis’ skill as a writer and artist (this is primarily a literature course), as well as a Christian spokesperson. • That you will be able to verbalize Lewis’ “translation” of the Christian faith, and perhaps incorporate some of his ideas into your own presentations of the gospel. • That you will respond to the creative imagination of Lewis with attempts of creativity yourself.

REQUIRED TEXTS Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity Lewis, C. S. The Screwtape Letters Lewis, C. S. The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle from the Chronicles of Narnia Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce Lewis, C. S. Till We Have Faces (additional photocopies will be given in class to cover shorter readings)

REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING 10% Attendance/participation/attention is expected at all sessions. See comments below regarding appropriate involvement in class. 15% In-class test on Mere Christianity October 13 15% In class-test on The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters . November 3 20% A 12-15 hour creative project. Details to follow. Part of the project will include a log/journal of the process and a five-minute presentation of the project in the final two classes of the term. Attendance is required at all three

classes. Due either December 1 or December 3 or December 8 (on a sign up basis). 40% Final Take-home Examination over the remaining units, including excerpts from The Four , An Experiment in Criticism, and The Great Divorce ; Till We Have Faces and “The Weight of Glory.” You may draw from the earlier material as well. Due Finals Week

Attendance: • Attendance, promptness, and attentiveness are expected at all class sessions. A temptation will be to skip near the end during class presentations. Those classes are some of the most important. Attendance and active participation in class discussion will be reflected in your participation grade. If you must be absent, please let me know; further, you must take the initiative for obtaining material you missed. More than four absences jeopardizes your successful completion of the class. Please see the Academic Calendar for detailed attendance policy.

Classroom etiquette It is a matter of courtesy and consideration to all of us that you observe some basic behaviours: • Come to class on time. • Do not leave the classroom during the class hour except for extreme emergency. • Turn off cell phones. • Limit your computer use to note-taking.

Assignments: • All assignments must be completed to pass the course, due on the day indicated. Note that the projects must be completed on time in order to allow for presentation. No assignments, i.e. the take-home exam, will be accepted after the last day of the term unless you have followed the procedure outlined in the Academic Calendar. • Inclusive language is expected in all writing assignments. • Please make sure your mail box number and name appear on all assignments. • As a general rule I do not accept assignments in electronic form. • You are advised to keep copies of your work until you have received your assignment back from your professor. (Your take-home examination will be marked and returned as a formal essay.) • All sources of information used for essays must be fully documented according to MLA guidelines. If you are uncertain how to follow these guidelines, please visit the Writing Centre. See the Academic Calendar for Tyndale’s official policy on documentation and plagiarism.

OUTLINE AND SCHEDULE

September 15-17 Introduction to course and Unit 1: Introduction to C. S. Lewis

September 22-24 Unit II: Mere Christianity, Books I-II

Sept. 29-Oct. 1 Unit II, cont.: Mere Christianity , Books III-IV

October 6-8 Unit II, cont.: Mere Christianity , Book IV Unit III, Introduction to the Chronicles of Narnia, The Magician’s Nephew

October 13 Test on Mere Christianity October 15 Unit III, cont.: the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle

October 20-22 Unit IV: The Screwtape Letters 1-10 Unit IV, cont.: The Screwtape Letters 11-30

October 27 READING DAY (no class) October 29 Catch-up

November 3 Test on Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters November 5 Unit V: Excerpts from

November 10-12 Unit VI: Excerpts from An Experiment in Criticism Unit VII: The Great Divorce

November 17-19 Unit VIII: Till We Have Faces Part I

November 24- Unit VIII, cont. Till We Have Faces Part II November 26 Unit IX: Excerpts from The Problem of Pain and “The Weight of Glory”

December 1-3 Presentation of projects

December 8 Presentation of projects

Take home final due during finals week

A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Please note: A list of books and essays by Lewis will be included in the biographical material of Unit 1.

Adey, Lionel. C. S. Lewis: Writer, Dreamer and Mentor . Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Barfield, Owen. Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis . Ed. G. B. Tennyson. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1989.

Beversluis, John. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion . Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 1985.

Carnell, Corbin. Bright Shadow of Reality: C. S. Lewis and the Feeling Intellect . Eerdmans, 1974.

Carpenter, Humphrey. . London: George Allen and Unwin, 1978.

Downing, David C. Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1992.

Ford, Paul. Companion to Narnia . : Harper and Row, 1983.

Fredrick, Candice and Sam McBride. Women Among the Inklings: Gender, C. s. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001.

Gibson, Evans. C. S. Lewis, Spinner of Tales, A Guide to His Fiction . Eerdmans, 1980.

Hooper, Walter. C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide . San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996.

Howard, Thomas. The Achievement of C. S. Lewis . Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1980.

-----. C. S. Lewis: A Reading of His Fiction. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987.

Hutter, Charles, Ed. Imagination and the Spirit . Eerdmans, 1971.

Karkainen, Paul. Narnia Explored . Old Tappan, N.J.: Fleming H. Revell, 1979.

Kilby, Clyde. The Christian World of C. S. Lewis . Eerdmans, 1964.

-----. Images of Salvation. Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1978.

Lindskoog, Kathryn. The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land. Eerdmans, 1973.

Martin, Thomas L., ed. Reading the Classics with C. S. Lewis . Baker Book House, 2000.

Menuge, Angus J. L., ed. C. S. Lewis: Lightbearer in the . Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1997.

Mills, David., ed. The Pilgrim’s Guide: C. S. Lewis and the Art of Witness . Eerdmans, 1998.

Sammons, Martha. A Guide Through Narnia. Wheaton: Harold Shaw, 1979.

-----. A Guide Through C. S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy. Westchester, Ill.: Cornerstone Books, 1980.

Sayer, George. Jack, A Life of C. S. Lewis. Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1988, 1994.

Schakel, Peter, ed. The Longing for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C. S. Lewis. Baker Book House, 1979.

-----. Reading with the Heart: The Way into Narnia . Eerdmans, 1979.

-----. Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis. Eerdmans, 1984.

Schultz, Jeffrey and John West. The C. S. Lewis Readers’ Encyclopedia . Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998.

Ward, Michael. Planet Narnia: The Seven in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Wilson, A. N. C. S Lewis, A Biography . London: HarperCollins, 1990.