C.S. Lewis' <I>The Great Divorce</I> and the Medieval Dream Vision

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

C.S. Lewis' <I>The Great Divorce</I> and the Medieval Dream Vision Volume 10 Number 2 Article 12 1983 C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce and the Medieval Dream Vision Robert Boeing Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Boeing, Robert (1983) "C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce and the Medieval Dream Vision," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 10 : No. 2 , Article 12. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol10/iss2/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Discusses the genre of the medieval dream vision, with summaries of some of the best known (and their precursors). Analyzes The Great Divorce as “a Medieval Dream Vision in which [Lewis] redirects the concerns of the entire genre.” Additional Keywords Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce; Medieval dream vision—Relation to The Great Divorce; Medieval dream vision—Sources This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol10/iss2/12 M YTHLORE 36: Summer 1983 Page 31 C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorceand the Medieval Dream Vision Robert Boenig As a medievalist, C.S. Lewis, of course, knew that the put, the plot of the early Dream Vision is this: a first-person Dream Vision was one of the most important genres of the narrator falls asleep and meets a guide who reveals some kind Middle Ages; after all, a chapter of his The .Allegory of Lore of wisdom to him which will either comfort him or give him is devoted to the most famous medieval Dream Vision, The needed knowledge. Romance of the Rose,1 and references to other Dream Visions The Romance of the Rose, begun in 1237 by Guillaume de are scattered throughout his critical writing.2 Works like the Lorris and completed forty or so years later by Jean de Meun, Old French Romance of the Rose3 and the Middle English was by far the most influential of medieval Dream Visions-so Dream Visions by Chaucer (The Book of the Duchess, The much so, that it should be considered the fourth of the genre’s House of Fame. The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of primary sources. In it, a young dreamer finds himself outside Good Women)4 and John Lydgate (Reason and Sensuality)5 a garden in the month of May; on its outside wall are paint­ attest both to the long popularity of the genre (c. AD 1200- ings of unpleasant allegorical figures-Hate, Jealousy, and the 1450) and to its versatility: religious, amorous, elegaic, satiric, like. Once a beautiful young woman named Idleness lets him and moral are the concerns of one or the other of these poems. in through the wicker gate, however, he finds not only the As a medievalist, Lewis also knew that creativity is a product of most pleasant of spring-time surroundings-birds singing and the reworking of source material as well as ex nihilo originality; flowers blooming-but also the corresponding pleasant allegori­ his famous article, ‘"What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato"6 cal figures walking about: Youth, Beauty, and, of course, the and his use of Milton's Paradise Lost for Perelandra, the works God of Love. The Dreamer wanders about the garden seeing its of H.G. Wells for Out of the Silent Planet,7 and the novels of wonders until he arrives at a rosebush where he simultaneously Charles Williams for That Hideous Strength are critical and sees a beautiful young blossom and is pierced by the God of creative proof of it. The Great Divorce is as much creative Love's arrows. The Romance of the Rose, as Lewis points out,11 response to source material as his science fiction, for despite is an allegory of the changing psychological states of a lover, the modern landscape with which it begins, it is a medieval and the rest of the poem is devoted to the Dreamer’s attempt Dream Vision in which he redirects the concerns of this entire to pluck the blossom. Guillaume left his poem unfinished, genre. and Jean, in finishing it, turns the pleasant surroundings of The medieval Dream Vision has three precursors: Cicero’s the beginning into a curious satire on the oddities of medieval Dream of Scipio, the biblical Apocalypse, and Boethius’ Con­ life and philosophy. But it is Guillaume’s beginning that be­ solation of Philosophy. In Cicero’s work,8 part of his Republic, queathed both the allegorical method and, more importantly, the statesman Scipio Africanus the younger, on a visit to Nu- the springtime setting to the later medieval Dream Visions.12 midia, falls asleep after a long talk with the Numidian King Chaucer translated the first section of The Romance of Massinissa and encounters his ancestor, Africanus the elder, in the Rose into Middle English, but his more original works a dream. He is transported to the heavens, looks down upon also reflect its influence. In The Legend of Good Women, for the earth from the great, height, and sees some things valuable instance, the narrator-as in all of his Dream Visions, a Active for his understanding of reality. Macrobius wrote a commen­ version of Chaucer himself-leaves his books for a walk in the tary of the work,9 and it is in this form that it was transmitted countryside in May to see his favorite flower, the daisy. He to the Middle Ages. Chaucer, referring to this commentary in later falls asleep and finds himself in the springtime garden three of his Dream Visions, seems particularly interested in of the God of Love, who appears to him and berates him for Macrobius’ classifications of dreams into various types.10 The writing so many stories condemning women. But the god is Apocalypse, of course the most familiar early Dream Vision, accompanied by Queen Alceste, the woman who was turned needs little introduction, except for the fact that commentaries into a daisy by the gods for her goodness and who suggests to written about it were almost as influential in the Middle Ages as the God of Love that Chaucer do penance by writing a series the work itself; those of Bede and Beata of Libana are notewor­ of stories about good women. In The Parliament of Fowls, thy. The Consolation of Philosophy recounts a vision Boethius, Chaucer the Dreamer finds himself in the garden of Love not philosopher and statesman under Theodoric in the 6th cen­ in May but on St. Valentine’s Day-because of the pre-reform tury, has in prison while awaiting execution for treason; Lady calendar and the procession of the equinoxes and the relatively Philosophy appears to him to argue that true wisdom lies not warm climate of 14th century England,13 the very beginning of in the unstable world of earthly success. Boethius was trans­ Spring. He there witnesses the gathering of the various birds mitted to the Middle Ages in numerous translations, including to choose their mates according to the customs of courtly love. those into English of King Alfred (9th century) and Chaucer Chaucer departs somewhat from these love-related concerns in (c. 1380). Somewhat out of our time period, but still and in­ his earliest Dream Vision, The Book of the Duchess. There the teresting attestation to Boethius’ popularity, is the translation Dreamer finds himself in the springtime garden not to learn made in the late 16th century by Queen Elizabeth I. Briefly about love, but to participate in an elegy for its loss: he comes Page 32 MYTHLORE 36: Summer 1983 across a Black Knight who is mourning the death of his Lady- instance, have analogues in medieval Dream Visions. We hear an allegory, of course, for the death of Blanche the wife of the birdsong encountered in most visions (see RR 700 ff; PF Chaucer’s patron. John of Gaunt. Chaucer's fourth Dream 190-1) throughout The Great Divorce (see, for instance, pp. Vision. Thr\e House of Fame is, however, a more radical change 26, 28, and 128).16 Similarly, the first flower that the narrator of pace, for there the genre is satirized: the narrator dreams Lewis, like Chaucer in The Legend of Good Women, encounters not in Spring but in December, the garden is transformed into in his garden is the daisy (compare GD, p. 28 with LGW, F- a desert island, and the courtly God of Love is transformed into text, 115 ff.). The river next to which so many events in T h e the fickle, madcap Goddess of Fame. The Dreamer, moreover, Great Divorce take place is an even more important borrowing does not simply awake in the place of his vision but must be than these, because we can trace Lewis’ actual syntax back to carried there by an eagle who complains to him about how very his sources: heavy lie is to carry.
Recommended publications
  • Under the Reign of Doubt.Htm
    Under the Reign of Doubt: Chaucer’s House of Fame and Narrative Authority Christopher B. Smith Department of English Villanova University Edited by Edward Pettit Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame is an unusual poem by anyone’s set of standards. Its feast of colorful action and antic pace seem at times to overwhelm the reader, as it does the somewhat hapless narrator; for a rather brief work, it contains a great deal to puzzle over. That the text is made all the more baffling by an abrupt conclusion has led to much speculation from scholars regarding its finished or unfinished nature, especially pertaining to the identity of the man of great authority seen “atte laste” (The Riverside Chaucer 373, l. 2155), who, ironically, will remain indefinitely unseen. Attempting to whittle down critical concerns with the poem to this one question, however, would be overly reductive, just as showing aesthetic appreciation merely for the fanciful humor and bewildered awe that portions of Chaucer’s text exhibit — treating it as a sort of fantasy story with a mild moralistic bent on the capriciousness of fame — misses its deeper concerns. Stephen Knight sees the poem in contrast to the relatively simplistic Book of the Duchess, a work with an “unproblematic ideology,” as one with “epistemological, even ontological concerns”; rather poetically, he says it is “a winter dream” (Knight 28). If the knight of Book of the Duchess exhibited honor as an absolute (and likewise for the characters and relationships exhibited in Chaucer’s narrative forebears), the concept itself, as well as “the mechanics of fame,” are now illuminated as far more complex than in previous imaginings: just as the “physical nature of [an] inquiry” is dealt with in the vocabulary of medieval science, the work as a whole involves a highly developed philosophy (28-29).
    [Show full text]
  • <I>Screwtape Letters</I> and <I>The Great Divorce
    Volume 17 Number 1 Article 7 Fall 10-15-1990 Immortal Horrors and Everlasting Splendours: C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce Douglas Loney Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Loney, Douglas (1990) "Immortal Horrors and Everlasting Splendours: C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 17 : No. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol17/iss1/7 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Sees Screwtape and The Great Divorce as constituting “something like a sub-genre within the Lewis canon.” Both have explicit religious intention, were written during WWII, and use a “rather informal, episodic structure.” Analyzes the different perspectives of each work, and their treatment of the themes of Body and Spirit, Time and Eternity, and Love.
    [Show full text]
  • The Dream Vision: the Other As the Self
    Linguistics and Literature Studies 6(2): 47-51, 2018 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/lls.2018.060201 The Dream Vision: The Other as the Self Natanela Elias Independent Scholar, Israel Copyright©2018 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract The Middle Ages were hardly known for their response. Dream visions form a literary combination of openness or willingness to accept the other, however, sleeping dreams and waking visions. In other words, the research indicates that things were not quite as they seemed. structure of the dream vision enables the necessary state of In this particular presentation, I would like to introduce the repose which ironically may lead to a re-awakening in the possibility of resolving conflict (social, political, religious) search for Truth. Barbara Newman [1] claims that dreams of via literature, and more specifically, through the use of the this kind, "like waking visions, focus less on predicting the popular medieval genre of the dream vision. future than on achieving self-knowledge, entering vividly into past events, or manifesting eternal truths”. Keywords Middle Ages, Self, Other, English literature, According to William Hodapp [2], and as we will try to John Gower delineate in this work, the structure of such visionary texts can be outlined "in four movements: first, the narrator describes an experience that suggested his initial psychological state; second, the narrator recounts a new 1. Introduction experience detailing a changed state of consciousness during which he encountered other characters; third, the narrator In our day and age, as we attempt to aspire to tolerance and describes an exchange, in this case as a dialogue between the acceptance, we must still acknowledge the existence of narrator and these other characters, through which he gained animosity, intolerance and discrimination.
    [Show full text]
  • The Process of Salvation in <I>Pearl
    Volume 37 Number 1 Article 2 10-15-2018 The Process of Salvation in Pearl and The Great Divorce Amber Dunai Texas A&M University - Central Texas Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Dunai, Amber (2018) "The Process of Salvation in Pearl and The Great Divorce," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 37 : No. 1 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol37/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Analyzes the structural, aesthetic, and thematic parallels between C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce and the Middle English dream vision Pearl. By exploring the tension between worldly and heavenly conceptions of justice, value, and possession in The Great Divorce and Pearl, this study demonstrates Lewis’s skill at utilizing and updating medieval source material in order to respond to twentieth-century problems.
    [Show full text]
  • 'To Tellen Al My Dreme Aryght': Text World Theory and Reading The
    ‘To tellen al my dreme aryght’: Text World Theory and Reading the Medieval Dream Vision in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The House of Fame Jonathan Lobley The use of the dream vision in Chaucer’s The House of Fame (c.1387) (HoF) serves not only to transport the reader through the subconscious experience of the dreamer, but must also serve as a medium through which to expose the fragile platform of history and philosophy, a platform, as Stephen Russell suggests, that is built on the ‘tyranny of the written word’ (Russell 1988: 175). In an attempt to emulate the dream experience, Chaucer’s oneiric images and structure at times verge on the surreal. However, as T. S. Miller posits, despite the ‘disorientating shifts of scene and surprising imagery’, the HoF ‘remains structured by a sequence of distinct interior and exterior spaces through which its narrator-dreamer passes’ (Miller 2014: 480). Whilst this accounts for the spatio-temporal tracking of the narrator-dreamer within the text itself, literary criticism does not sufficiently explain the reader’s cognitive process as they attempt to map and construct their own cognitive model of the world in which the dreamer moves. Thus, this essay will use Marcello Giovanelli’s (2013) adaptation of Joanna Gavins’ (2005, 2007) and Paul Werth’s (1995, 1999) original Text World Theory (TWT) models to assess how a reader is manoeuvred through the abstract notion of a literary sleep-dream world. In doing so, I hope to uncover some limitations in the above Text World Theory models when applying them to Chaucer’s medieval dream vision.
    [Show full text]
  • The Chaucerian Dream Vision and the Neoconservative Nightmare
    Page 2 Strange Bedfellows: The Chaucerian Dream Vision and the Neoconservative Nightmare Drew Beard A dazed­looking young woman in a flowing white gown wanders down a suburban street, encountering a little girl in a frilly white dress; like the young woman, she is blond and we see that she has used chalk to sketch on the sidewalk the abandoned house standing before them. When asked if she lives there, the little girl giggles and says that ‘no one lives here.’ The young woman asks about ‘Freddy’ and is told: ‘He’s not home.’ In an instant, the sky darkens and it begins to rain heavily, washing away the chalk drawing of the little girl, who has disappeared. Reluctantly drawn into the house, the young woman finds herself trapped inside, surrounded by the anguished cries of children, as a tricycle comes crashing down the staircase. Attempting to escape, the young woman opens the front door and finds herself not outside but once again in the front hallway of this house of horrors, a nightmarish re­imagining of a family home. As the door slams shut behind her, it becomes clear that there is no escape.(1) She is trapped inside the horrific dream vision that forms the narrative basis of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, the postmodern counterpart of the dream visions dating from the 14th century. Characterized by what Deanne Williams refers to as a ‘dynamic relation between text and commentary,’(2) the medieval ‘dream vision’ is defined by its allegorical orientation, an emphasis on the surreal or absurd, and a subjective and flexible reality.
    [Show full text]
  • Enemies of Science: the Handmaiden's Handmaiden in the Early
    Enemies of Science: The Handmaiden’s Handmaiden in the Early Medieval West Michael P. Honchock Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts In English Anthony J. Colaianne, Chair Joseph F. Eska Matthew Goodrum April 23, 2007 Blacksburg, Virginia Keywords: Other, Rationality, Magic, Cosmology, History, Ideas Enemies of Science: The Handmaiden’s Handmaiden in the Early Medieval West Michael P. Honchock ABSTRACT The gradual blending of classical science and epistemology with indigenous/traditional practices and modes of understanding (particularly magic and religion) in the early western Middle Ages tends to be misunderstood. The purpose of this study is to address the reason(s) why the early medieval West has been labeled an irrational, unscientific “Dark Age” in order to point out that this conception’s existence has more to do with limited historical perspectives than with reality. The anachronistic superimposition of modern presuppositions and methodological expectations is a very old phenomenon. Ironically, however, it has crept into the history of science and extended to ostensibly objective “scientific” historiography to such a degree that dismissiveness regarding the other ways of knowing that have informed our scientific and epistemological development frequently tends to obscure historical continuity. My goal in this undertaking is to firmly establish how we may understand that the intellectual revolution beginning in twelfth-century Europe was founded on a rich and multifarious tradition of knowledge and understanding; the preceding seven or eight centuries of the early Middle Ages was not one of intellectual “darkness” and should not be discarded as such.
    [Show full text]
  • Archons (Commanders) [NOTICE: They Are NOT Anlien Parasites], and Then, in a Mirror Image of the Great Emanations of the Pleroma, Hundreds of Lesser Angels
    A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES WATCH THIS IMPORTANT VIDEO UFOs, Aliens, and the Question of Contact MUST-SEE THE OCCULT REASON FOR PSYCHOPATHY Organic Portals: Aliens and Psychopaths KNOWLEDGE THROUGH GNOSIS Boris Mouravieff - GNOSIS IN THE BEGINNING ...1 The Gnostic core belief was a strong dualism: that the world of matter was deadening and inferior to a remote nonphysical home, to which an interior divine spark in most humans aspired to return after death. This led them to an absorption with the Jewish creation myths in Genesis, which they obsessively reinterpreted to formulate allegorical explanations of how humans ended up trapped in the world of matter. The basic Gnostic story, which varied in details from teacher to teacher, was this: In the beginning there was an unknowable, immaterial, and invisible God, sometimes called the Father of All and sometimes by other names. “He” was neither male nor female, and was composed of an implicitly finite amount of a living nonphysical substance. Surrounding this God was a great empty region called the Pleroma (the fullness). Beyond the Pleroma lay empty space. The God acted to fill the Pleroma through a series of emanations, a squeezing off of small portions of his/its nonphysical energetic divine material. In most accounts there are thirty emanations in fifteen complementary pairs, each getting slightly less of the divine material and therefore being slightly weaker. The emanations are called Aeons (eternities) and are mostly named personifications in Greek of abstract ideas.
    [Show full text]
  • The English Dream Vision
    The English Dream Vision ANATOMY OF A FORM J. Stephen Russell The English Dream Vision ANATOMY OF A FORM By J. Stephen Russell The first-person dream-frame nar­ rative served as the most popular English poetic form in the later Mid­ dle Ages. In The English Dream Vision, Stephen Russell contends that the poetic dreams of Chaucer, Lang- land, the Pearl poet, and others employ not simply a common exter­ nal form but one that contains an internal, intrinsic dynamic or strategy as well. He finds the roots of this dis­ quieting poetic form in the skep­ ticism and nominalism of Augustine, Macrobius, Guillaume de Lorris, Ockham, and Guillaume de Conches, demonstrating the interdependence of art, philosophy, and science in the Middle Ages. Russell examines the dream vision's literary contexts (dreams and visions in other narratives) and its ties to medieval science in a review of medi­ eval teachings and beliefs about dreaming that provides a valuable survey of background and source material. He shows that Chaucer and the other dream-poets, by using the form to call all experience into ques­ tion rather than simply as an authen­ ticating device suggesting divine revelation, were able to exploit con­ temporary uncertainties about dreams to create tense works of art. continued on back flap "English, 'Dream Vision Unglisfi (Dream Vision ANATOMY OF A FORM J. Stephen Russell Ohio State University Press • Columbus Copyright © 1988 by the Ohio State University Press. All rights reserved. Quotations from the works of Chaucer are taken from The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Myth in CS Lewis's Perelandra
    Walls 1 A Hierarchy of Love: Myth in C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra A Thesis Submitted to The Faculty of the School of Communication In Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in English by Joseph Robert Walls May 2012 Walls 2 Liberty University School of Communication Master of Arts in English _______________________________________________________________________ Thesis Chair Date Dr. Branson Woodard, D.A. _______________________________________________________________________ First Reader Date Dr. Carl Curtis, Ph.D. _______________________________________________________________________ Second Reader Date Dr. Mary Elizabeth Davis, Ph.D. Walls 3 For Alyson Your continual encouragement, support, and empathy are invaluable to me. Walls 4 Contents Introduction......................................................................................................................................5 Chapter 1: Understanding Symbol, Myth, and Allegory in Perelandra........................................11 Chapter 2: Myth and Sacramentalism Through Character ............................................................32 Chapter 3: On Depictions of Evil...................................................................................................59 Chapter 4: Mythical Interaction with Landscape...........................................................................74 A Conclusion Transposed..............................................................................................................91 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................................94
    [Show full text]
  • Joy Davidman Lewis: Author, Editor and Collaborator
    Volume 22 Number 2 Article 3 1998 Joy Davidman Lewis: Author, Editor and Collaborator Diana Pavlac Glyer Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Glyer, Diana Pavlac (1998) "Joy Davidman Lewis: Author, Editor and Collaborator," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 22 : No. 2 , Article 3. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol22/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Biography of Joy Davidman Lewis and her influence on C.S. Lewis. Additional Keywords Davidman, Joy—Biography; Davidman, Joy—Criticism and interpretation; Davidman, Joy—Influence on C.S. Lewis; Davidman, Joy—Religion; Davidman, Joy. Smoke on the Mountain; Lewis, C.S.—Influence of Joy Davidman (Lewis); Lewis, C.S.
    [Show full text]
  • Favorite Authors C.S. Lewis
    Favorite Authors C.S. Lewis His writing encompassed fiction; nonfiction; children’s stories such as the Chronicles of Narnia; and books about literature, including English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama; but how much do you know about C.S. Lewis and the world he lived in? Try the following puzzles to find out! First, fill in the blanks in the following puzzle using the word bank provided. Next, create a timeline of a few of C.S. Lewis’ works by writing the letter that corresponds to the correct year of publication beside each work. Finally, take a look at life in C.S. Lewis’ time. For each date, choose the correct event from U.S. history and the correct event from world history and write their corresponding letters in the blanks beside the facts. An answer key is in the back if you get stumped. Have fun! © Bonnie Rose Hudson www.writebonnierose.com C.S. Lewis Fill-In C.S. Lewis, an ____________________-born ____________________ and author of more than ____________________ books, was born on November 29, 1898, in ____________________. Education was very important to Lewis’ family. His father was a ____________________, and his mother had a college degree at a time when it was not common for women. Lewis began reading when he was only ____________________ years old and began writing stories when he was ____________________. In 1916, he won a ____________________ to ____________________. He served in ____________________and then studied at ____________________, where he became a fellow and tutor in 1925. He kept this position until 1954, when he became a professor of ____________________ and Renaissance English at the ____________________.
    [Show full text]