Posted on 09/03/2013 5:07:59 PM PDT by BlackVeil
Recently, while discussing the role of fictional stories in spiritual formation with my students, I found myself returning to the works of C.S. Lewis as an example. While I did not discuss The Chronicles of Narnia, I can undeniably say that the fictional works of Lewis have shaped me spiritually. From a young age, I have read and reread the Narnian stories. They have become a part of my spiritual formation and of many others as well. Lewis has had this effect on Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, as well. He also confesses to repeatedly reading and studying the Lewis’ works and writes of Lewis ...
(Excerpt) Read more at erb.kingdomnow.org ...
Everyone should read Lewis’s Space Trilogy,(Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength). Read them all, but “That Hideous Strength” couldn’t be more prophetic of the world today.
I agree with you 100%. The book is a masterpiece, just as a novel, and it is also coming true all around us.
Lewis knew nothing about politics - he did not bother with it - and studied little history. He liked the classics, literature and religion.
But his political insights were excellent, and his futuristic novel far more accurate than those of other - apparently better informed - writers.
I’m reading That Hideous Strength right now and so far it’s pretty depressing because it is a lot like right now. We hear a lot about 1984 and Brave New World but That Hideous Strength seems more realistic than either.
Ping
“Read them all, but “That Hideous Strength” couldn’t be more prophetic of the world today.”
Like it was pulled right from the headlines. The humanistic bureaucracy stuff is dead on.
Freegards
LOL, I like your nom de plume.
I’ll bet you read it but for everyone else “The Great Divorce” by Lewis is a masterpiece of the perils of puffery and self-deception. a must read too.
Since I’ve gone beyond Narnia several years ago, I’ve read nothing but Lewis’s other works, Chesterton and George MacDonald because of the other two. What a learning experience and a lifetime of reading.
The latest Lewis I tackled was his ‘Other Worlds’ series of essays/stories that deal with sci-fi kinda themes. Here’s some other conservative Catholic sci-fi writers!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RA_Lafferty
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_wolfe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Wright_(author)
John C Wright has a very conservative blog about sci-fi, political and Christian themes that drives libs nutso:
Freegards
I sure like Lewis more than I like Rowan Williams.....,
In fact, he wrote an excellent book on how to read literature in its historical context:
Medieval and Renaissance Europe had politics that make our current practitioners look like a church committee. Machiavelli simply summarized it all.
I agree absolutely about Lewis' insight -- but you can't read Tacitus and Livy and Geoffrey of Monmouth and Snorri Sturleson and come away without a knowledge of history and politics.
Yes indeed. May justice be done here as well. Amen.
I love Lewis’s Space Trilogy, as well as all of the Narnia books. But my favorite Lewis works are The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain and (his masterpiece) Mere Christianity.
I'm not sure I trust Rowan Williams to say anything useful about Lewis.
Far better to cut to the chase and just read Lewis in the original. As Lewis himself said,
There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books. Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about "isms" and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said. The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism. It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that firsthand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than secondhand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire.
- "On the reading of old books" - preface to Athanasius, "On the Incarnation"
oh yes, great post...I am very familiar with that particular essay!!!!
I'm reading The Four Loves now but have also read, Miracles, The Abolition of Man, A Grief Observed and the ones you mentioned.
Surprised by Joy is autobiographical, mainly of his younger years but has a section in it that is pretty shocking.
What does anybody here think of the movie Shadowlands?
For an extremely learned professor to have this sort of clear and common-sense voice is very unusual. A real blessing.
well said
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