C. S. Lewis

British scholar and writer

• Born: November 29, 1898
• Birthplace: Belfast, Ireland (now in Northern Ireland)
• Died: November 22, 1963
• Place of death: Oxford, England

Lewis enlarged the understanding of the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance through his scholarship. He also composed novels and children’s literature of lasting impact and published many insightful books concerning Christianity.

Early Life

Clive Staples Lewis was born to Albert Lewis, a successful and well-to-do solicitor who nonetheless always felt threatened by poverty, and Florence Hamilton, a well-educated woman with a degree in mathematics and logic as well as talent in the humanities. She tutored Lewis in both French and Latin before he was seven. Such early exposure to languages and learning was complemented by the atmosphere at Little Lea, the family house. The place was erratically planned, full of hidden crannies, empty passageways, and piles of books.

On the death of Florence in 1908, Albert sent both of his sons, Warnie and Clive (who insisted on adopting the name “Jack”), to the English boarding school of Wynyard. It was a declining and miserable institution with a brutal headmaster. Lewis escaped this institution and won a scholarship to the prestigious public school Malvern College. The school was dominated by athletic snobs, who ridiculed Lewis. He soon begged his father to remove him from the institution. Albert, making a remarkably wise decision, put his son under the tutelage of his former headmaster, W. T. Kirkpatrick, who trained the boy in logical discourse, languages, and literature. His pupil became adept at argumentation and the translation of Greek and Latin literature.

Lewis won a classical scholarship to Oxford and matriculated into University College in April, 1917. World War I put his academic career on hold as he joined the Officer Training Corps and was billeted in Keble College for his military education. There he met Paddy Moore; during leaves, he spent much time with Paddy’s family, Janie Moore and her daughter Maureen. Shipped to France in November, 1917, Lewis fought in the Battle of Arras and was badly wounded by friendly artillery fire. Albert’s peculiar unwillingness to visit his son and the death of Paddy drove Janie Moore and Lewis to take on the roles of mother and son toward each other. Lewis took care of Moore for the next thirty years by financially supporting her and, after his required residency at college, living with her.

Lewis’s student career at Oxford can only be characterized as spectacular. He studied classical literature, philosophy, and ancient history. He placed first in his honors finals in 1920 and 1922. He went on to read English language and literature and took a first in that in 1923. After winning the prestigious Chancellor’s Prize for an essay in English, Lewis was well placed to compete for an academic post at Oxford. With the continued financial assistance of Albert and the academic support of his tutors, he succeeded in a fellowship in English at Magdalen College in 1925. His appointment gave him financial security and launched his scholarly career.

Life’s Work

It took Lewis ten years to firmly settle into his academic career and publish his first scholarly work, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936), in which he emphasized the importance of the creative power of myth in English literature. It was anything but a popular work, as it dealt with a neglected literary heritage and a difficult area of interpretation, but scholars in the field received it very favorably. Given Lewis’s heavy teaching load and the domestic distractions imposed on him by his selfish, erratic, and “adopted” mother Moore, his productiveness was remarkable. He took his tutorials with pupils and his lectures quite seriously although he saw them as generally unprofitable uses of his time. He would often enter a classroom lecturing and continue in his booming voice with enthusiasm and humor. Lewis was physically startling, being somewhat thickly set with a round, reddish face complemented by a hearty laugh and direct manner.

Lewis underwent a conversion experience in 1929 that eventually provided part of the foundation for much of his creative work. Lewis had rejected Christianity early in his life, arguing with his boyhood friend Arthur Greeves that it was only one of many religious myths with no basis in fact. In Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955), Lewis charts his metamorphosis from atheist to Christian. His close friends J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Hugo Dyson convinced him that Christianity was similar to the classical and Scandinavian traditions with the singular difference that it was true.

Lewis’s conversion made more coherent his notion of “joy,” which, unlike the conventional idea, was not “happiness” or “pleasure” but rather a sense of longing for transcendent beauty or truth. Lewis, in the late 1930’s, began to combine his Christianity with his literary knowledge to create novels of spiritual fantasy and science fiction. The resulting trilogy, consisting of Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945), created nothing less than the impression of a new mythology. Perelandra, the only overtly theological work, narrated a story of a different Eve in a surrealistic setting on Venus. Lewis’s fundamental message was a strong criticism of the view that saw meaning only in the expansion and distribution of the human race in the cosmos. Perhaps his most complex and critically well received novel was Till We Have Faces (1956), a variation on the Cupid and Psyche myth.

During World War II Lewis was catapulted into worldwide fame via his forays into theological fantasy and popularized theology. A speech by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and its almost satanic persuasiveness inspired Lewis to write The Screwtape Letters (1942), an uncanny and frighteningly insightful series of letters from a senior devil to a junior devil who attempts to ensure the entrance of one young man into hell. It is a sardonic commentary not only on modernism but also on conventional religion and liberal theology. Perhaps because of this book, many of Lewis’s academic colleagues could not forgive his popularity nor his trespass into unacademic advocacy. Lewis was, however, not isolated. Oxford was a place of societies and informal groups that provide inspiration and produce work. Such a gathering was the Inklings, a group of scholars and writers who met in Lewis’s rooms and pubs from 1930 to 1949. At these meetings Tolkien read The Hobbit (1937), and Lewis read his first purely theological work, The Problem of Pain (1940).

Christian apologetics was to become an area of some concern for Lewis during World War II. He made a series of broadcasts on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in which certain essentials of Christianity were distilled and common doctrines among many denominations were described. These talks were called Mere Christianity (1952) when they appeared in book form, the term “mere” meaning the essential and central part of Christianity.

After the war, Lewis again became busy tutoring and lecturing as well as pursuing his scholarly work. He finally completed his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (1954) in which he rejected the creative primacy of the Renaissance and pointed to continuity between the medieval and modern ages. In the 1950’s Lewis also wrote the series of children’s books for which he became most well known. The seven Chronicles of Narnia (1950-1956), beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), were on a level of high fantasy, depicting a struggle between good and evil through powerful but not obvious religious symbols.

In the mid-1950’s, two chairs of English literature became vacant at Oxford, but neither went to Lewis, in part because of academic distaste for and jealousy of his popular works. Cambridge was much more tolerant of Lewis’s eclectic interests and elected him as professor of medieval and Renaissance English. Lewis took up residence at Magdalene College in 1955. In the same year Lewis published Surprised By Joy. The work could be construed to have a double meaning because Lewis had become close friends with Joy Helen Davidman, an American writer. To prevent Joy and her two sons from being deported, Lewis consented to a registry marriage, something he perceived as a mere formal legality. Shortly thereafter, Joy tragically fell ill with bone cancer and Lewis, out of pity, married her in the Anglican church according to Joy’s wish. With the approach of death, Lewis admitted his love for Joy. Miraculously, the cancer went into remission and for the next three years Joy and Lewis were able to live a normal and happy life together. Yet the disease returned and ended Lewis’s few years as a husband. He movingly described his sense of loss in A Grief Observed (1961).

Lewis was productive up until shortly before his death in 1963. Before Joy died, he finished The Four Loves (1960), which discussed the nature of affection, friendship, eros, and charity. His final academic work, The Discarded Image (1964), was an introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature. Despite problems with his prostate and associated complications, Lewis was able to continue his teaching until the spring of 1963. After a heart attack in July, his health rapidly declined. He died in his home, the Kilns, on November 22, 1963.

Significance

Lewis has been influential in both literature and religion. He is often perceived as a rallying point for those who reject the trends of relativism and deconstruction in literature, as well as a legitimizing force for orthodox Christianity within academic circles. His impact as an antimodernist and conservative in literature, as well as his rejuvenation of medieval literature and seventeenth century English epic poet John Milton as worthy of study continue to be felt. Lewis’s creative work is more difficult to evaluate, but its significance should not be understated. His sense of myth as a creative force has made its mark both in the rise of fantasy literature for children and in the genre of science fiction. Lewis’s apologies are more problematic. His arguments for a rational faith have only moderate force, yet his later religious books show a greater sensitivity and depth. The works of all genres in which Lewis wrote remain remarkably popular, and his impact on perceptions of faith, beauty, and truth has been quite profound.

Bibliography

Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. Carpenter relates the life of Lewis in the context of his closest literary friends, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and others. Useful for a sense of Oxonian life and society during the early to mid-twentieth century.

Green, Roger Lancelyn, and Walter Hooper. C. S. Lewis: A Biography. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. This “authorized” biography is written by a former pupil (Green) and a friend and personal secretary (Hooper).

Hooper, Walter. C. S. Lewis: Companion and Guide. New York: Harper Collins, 1996. This extremely useful volume contains a 120-page biography, a chronology, summaries of major works, sample reviews, explanations of key ideas, and an exhaustive bibliography of Lewis’s works.

Jacobs, Alan. The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis. San Francisco, Calif.: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. Jacobs uses the themes and stories in Lewis’s Narnia books to explore Lewis’s imaginative life.

Lewis, C. S. Surprised By Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955. Lewis’s spiritual autobiography relates the emotional and intellectual roots of his conversion. Essential to any understanding of Lewis’s writings and development.

Myers, Doris T. C. S. Lewis in Context. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1994. This readable study in criticism sees Lewis less as an isolated figure and more reflective of his times. Includes a useful works cited section.

Wilson, A. N. C. S. Lewis: A Biography. London: HarperPerennial, 2005. An intimate and probing biography of Lewis.