University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2016 Innocence Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Literature in the Works of C. S. Lewis Heather Louise Nation Hess University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Hess, Heather Louise Nation, "Innocence Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Literature in the Works of C. S. Lewis. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2016. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/3704 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Heather Louise Nation Hess entitled "Innocence Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Literature in the Works of C. S. Lewis." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Amy Billone, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Nancy Henry, Dawn Coleman, Rosalind Hackett Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Innocence Revisited: Nineteenth-Century Literature in the Works of C. S. Lewis A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Heather Louise Nation Hess May 2016 Copyright © 2016 by Heather L. N. Hess All rights reserved. ii DEDICATION To Dave For five years you have embraced my dreams with tender constancy, even—and especially— when I struggled to do so myself. I cannot imagine a better friend or partner to walk with me through all manner of circumstance, personal and professional. You have taught me to trust deeply, to work joyfully, to live fully. “It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.” – Jane Eyre And to Jane Providence has seen fit that as I finish one chapter another should begin. Little one, you are the sweetest turn my story has yet taken. I cannot wait to read further. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the many people who graciously contributed time and resources to this project. To anyone I have neglected mention here (doubtless there are many), thank you for your contributions of time and finance, as well as emotional, intellectual, and spiritual support. To my committee, Amy Billone, Nancy Henry, Dawn Coleman and Rosalind Hackett, thank you for agreeing to follow me into somewhat unfamiliar territory on a very unconventional project. I am gratified by the confidence you placed in me from day one and I have striven to deserve it. For the countless hours of reading, editing, meeting, and for the sheer encouragement you offered, I am ever thankful. Each of you has nourished me as a scholar and a human being. Thank you to Pamela Jordan-Long of Taylor University for allowing me access to the Brown Collection and assisting me with my research whilst there. My time at Taylor was short, but it was an excellent introduction to Lewis’s marginalia. I am also grateful to Marjorie Lamp Mead, Laura Schmidt, Elaine Hooker, and all the staff of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. Thank you for the warmth and willingness with which you accommodated a young, naïve, and overly ambitious researcher. Marjorie, thank you for generously introducing me to a community of seasoned Lewis scholars. Laura and Elaine, your enthusiasm and knowledge made research both delightful and easy. I expected archival research on Lewis to be thrilling, but I did not expect to meet so many kind and kindred spirits along the way. The extensive and well-trained staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford was also of great assistance in my research, particularly Colin Harris, who graciously oriented me in the Lewis special collections. Thank you also to the hospitable Robin Darwall-Smith, who welcomed me up the winding stairs of the Magdalen College archives in the McFarlane Library. None of my research travels would have been possible without the generous funding of the University of Tennessee’s Thomas Wheeler Travelling Fellowship. I am also indebted to the generosity of the Judith Slagle Research Fellowship, which allowed me to travel to Oxford. Thank you to the participants of the Dickens Universe Graduate Winter Conference, the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies Conference, and the Tennessee Philological Association Conference, who lent kind ears to portions of chapters two and three. An especial thanks to John Jordan, Carol MacKay, and Elsie Michie, who went above and beyond to provide me with challenging and encouraging feedback on the H. G. Wells portion of chapter three. Writing about C. S. Lewis has the added benefit of bringing one into contact with a number of charming people and I am gratified by how many of these individuals have given of their time in email correspondence, at café counters, and around dinner tables. I would especially like to thank Michael Ward, Jonathan Kirkpatrick, and Walter Hooper for their kind, honest, and insightful answers to my many, and doubtless often ignorant, questions. The greatest debt of all is to my family. To my husband Dave, thank you for your unflinching love these many years. You have stuck with me through ups and downs, and times of pure, unadulterated stress. Without your determination to support and encourage, this dissertation would never have been written. To my in-laws, Rick and Miriam Hess, thank you for keeping me comfortably housed, well fed, and surrounded by good company on my pilgrimages to Wheaton. iv I am also grateful to my brother, Trey, for challenging me to read, engage, and enjoy texts from earliest childhood. Brother, you never cease to inspire me as a scholar and a human. I must also thank Trey’s wife, Hannah, for engaging me in multiple Lewis-related conversations that helped me to challenge my assumptions and solidify my argumentative footing. Finally, I am unspeakably grateful to my parents, Bill and Vicki Nation, who set the wheels of my life’s work in motion many years ago. Thank you for all the financial and emotional resources you have poured into my education, including excursions to literary landmarks and delightful surprise book packages postmarked “London.” Most of all, thank you for forcing a stubbornly illiterate little girl to read, for introducing her to Aslan, and for encouraging her to pursue her passions. To all my family: I love you. v ABSTRACT Influence has long been a focus of scholarly work on C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), but this scholarly conversation largely neglects the nineteenth-century. In this project I will establish the profound influence of nineteenth-century texts, authors, and ideas on Lewis’s thought and work, arguing that the Romantic metanarrative—which traces the individual’s progression through innocence, experience, and higher innocence—provides the foundation for Lewis’s self-construction as well as his fictional work. While the Romantics provide the initial concepts to Lewis, it is Victorian iterations of the Romantic metanarrative that Lewis most heavily revises. In his 2013 biography of Lewis, Alister McGrath suggests that Lewis views the middle ages through “Victorian spectacles” because of his affinity for Victorian Medievalist, William Morris; I propose that these “Victorian spectacles” apply more broadly and influence not only Lewis’s interpretations of past texts, but also his entire worldview—literary, intellectual, spiritual and otherwise. Lewis’s fiction presents Romantic metanarrative as seen through his unique nineteenth-century (re)vision and adapted by his Christian imagination. The scope of the study will include works from the long nineteenth century—from William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience (1795) to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden (1911)—as well as Lewis’s full writings, including his poetry, fiction, prose, diary, letters, autobiography, apologetics, criticism, and marginalia. My chapters will focus on 1) Surprised by Joy as romantic autobiography, 2) Till We Have Faces as neo-Victorian Bildungsroman, 3) Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength as neo- Victorian genre fiction, and 4) The Chronicles of Narnia as a revision of Golden Age children’s literature. In each case, I will demonstrate how the Romantic metanarrative shapes both the original nineteenth-century texts as well as Lewis’s revisions of those texts. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 1 Lewis in Context .............................................................................................................................................. 3 Scholarly Contributions .............................................................................................................................. 11 Methodology ..................................................................................................................................................