Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Matter And (Mostly) Manner Of Mere Christianity, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Presented to a meeting of the Inkling Folk Fellowship (IFF), July 23rd, 2021.

Zoom Session Link: https://youtu.be/F2ZKEPD0YFg

Research Question•Why does Lewis’s work of popular apologetics continue to find a wide readership while other excellent books in the same genre—e.g., Sayers’s Creed or Chaos—do not?

Christianity Today Survey (2000): Most influential Christian books

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1942-44; 1952) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (1937) Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (1932-67) J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (1968) G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908) Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948) Richard Foster, …

Book Review: The Lion In The Waste Land: Fearsome Redemption In The Work Of C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, And T. S. Eliot By Janice Brown, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Readers of scholarship about C. S. Lewis are familiar with studies that discuss his work and life in the context of his fellow Inklings: Tolkien, Williams, and Barfield. Janice Brown’s decision, however, to treat C. S. Lewis alongside two of his contemporary writers, both non-Inklings—Dorothy L. Sayers and T. S. Eliot—does demand an explanation. Brown must have recognized as much since she begins The Lion in the Waste Land by building a case for considering these three authors together, citing British historian Adrian Hastings, who identifies a “re-appropriation of Christian faith” during World War II and attributes this revival …

Books, Theology, And Hens: The Correspondence And Friendship Of C. S. Lewis And Dorothy L. Sayers, Laura K. Simmons, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

"That Lewis and Sayers had much in common and that their lives intersected in a number of interesting ways throughout their careers is common knowledge for even the casual follower of either author. What does not seem to have been appreciated or explained sufficiently in the scholarship to date is the nature of the friendship between these two influential Christian authors. Therefore, it is this friendship we wish to shed light on, using as our primary source the correspondence between Lewis and Sayers from 1942-1957. In addition, we look at what the biographers of each author have to say about …

Faith And God (Chapter 3 Of "Reflections: Virginia Woolf And Her Quaker Aunt, Caroline Stephen"), Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

"Beyond the bulwark of family, for both Caroline Stephen and Virginia Woolf, the institution of the Church was central in fostering a patriarchal fortress that kept women in an inferior position. For Caroline, turning away from the church tradition of her forefathers led her to the Quaker tradition as a way to honor both her God and herself as a woman. For Virginia, that same impulse led her away from the church as well, and although she did not embrace the tenets of Quakerism, much of her work is certainly imbued with a Quaker sensitivity to mysticism and spirituality."

Living By The Code: Authority In Gerard Stembridge's The Gay Detective, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Irish drama has few representations of police officers as anything but a trope for authority, tending to avoid any substantive character development. Likewise, it has few representations of homosexual characters, and when such representations do exist they are often caricatures. Reductive portrayals of police often arise from the complex relationship the Irish have with authority and with the legal system. But one of the few exceptions to this trend, and the only play to tackle the representation of a police officer and a homosexual at once, is Gerard Stembridge’s play The Gay Detective (1996). The play offers up the character …

Schwartz's "C.S. Lewis On The Final Frontier: Science And The Supernatural In The Space Trilogy" - Book Review, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

Miller's "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures In Narnia" - Book Review, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

No abstract provided.

The Search For Irishness (Chapter One Of Buffoonery In Irish Drama: Staging Twentieth-Century Post-Colonial Stereotypes), Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "A striking feature in Irish culture since at least the late 19th century is an impulse to define what constitutes "Irish," seemingly to establish the qualifications of those who claim to be Irish. It is an impulse that manifests itself in literature as diverse as George Bernard Shaw's play, john Buff's Other Island, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, or Seamus Heaney's Station Island. The same impulse is at work in the public lives of figures like Oscar Wilde, who while exiled created a fascinating persona for himself; Patrick O'Brian, who refashioned himself as …

“Untiring Joys And Sorrows”: Yeats And The Sidhe, Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "In popular culture, the idea of Irishness has long been associated with the idea of fairies and leprechauns. This association has been explored by scholars who treat the Sidhe—also known as the daoine maithe, or the “good people”—as either a sociological or a literary construct. Most often, the sociological con- struct is somewhat insidious and the literary construct tends to be romantic. Recently, Angela Bourke has explored how the folkloric understanding of the fairies may be used to explain the otherwise inexplicable—for instance, when hormonal changes that come about through puberty or menopause were explained by saying that …

Observe The Sons Of Ulster Talking Themselves To Death (Chapter In The Theatre Of Frank Mcguinness: Stages Of Mutability), Kathleen A. Heininge

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Within Irish drama of the late 20'h century, the use of language as a marker for lrishness begins to shift away from a focus on accents and Hiberno-English, towards a use of language that attempts to actually establish new truths: truths about relationships and alliances, truths about history, truths about memory, and especially truths about identity. Language becomes the very means of change and hope, in drama that has become concerned with the use of language not as signifier of nation but as reiteration of the stories that might be able to change through that reiteration. What is 'true' …