Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Discovering C. S. Lewis’S Argument From Awe Against Philosophical Naturalism, Piotr Bylica

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Although Clive Staples Lewis’s (1898–1963) works on the intersection of philosophy and religion were aimed at a broader readership and are indeed well-known among the general public, they are also valued among professional philosophers and theologians alike, especially those focusing on the relations between theism, atheism, and naturalism. His three most popular arguments against naturalism are the Argument from Reason, the Moral Argument, and the Argument from Desire. In that context, the present article aims to show that Lewis actually made use of a fourth type of argument against philosophical naturalism that has so far escaped identification. Since this argument …

C. S. Lewis And The Argument From Reason, Elijah Mcclanahan

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

This essay surveys and demonstrates that the "argument from reason" is a dominant methodological theme in the apologetics of C. S. Lewis.

C. S. Lewis And Artificial Intelligence: An Ai Ethics Problem, Justin E. Edgerly

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

This paper demonstrates that the quest for safe and ethical AI is undermined by much of the philosophy, implicit and explicit, in AI literature and undergirding AI research and development. C. S. Lewis’s writings provide a prescient and penetrating critique of this philosophy and point toward a “regenerate science” that addresses the present need for wisdom in AI development. This paper contributes to the field of AI ethics by presenting several Lewisian concerns about the nature, application, and undergirding philosophy of current and future AI technologies, as well as a Lewisian perspective on the requirements for safe and ethical AI.

Divergent Paths: The Spiritual Friendship Of C. S. Lewis And Dom Bede Griffiths, Martha Abele Mac Iver

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

This essay argues that despite their parallel conversion journeys at Oxford and their lifelong friendship, C. S. Lewis and Dom Bede Griffiths ultimately came to different understandings about the relationship between humans and God and what it means to commune with God in what we commonly call prayer. Despite the frequent mention of prayer in their letters, their views of the way in which God was present within them and what communion with God entailed diverged in significant ways as Griffiths sought to integrate Christian and Hindu conceptions of God. Their own spiritual friendship may have survived this rift, but …

C. S. Lewis’S Lost French Doctorate, Anne-Frédérique Mochel-Caballero

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Before the American Narnia films, C. S. Lewis was virtually unknown in France. Even today, his fame is nowhere near the level it has reached in the English-speaking world, be it in academia, among Christians, or in popular culture. The number of French doctoral theses or books on Lewis is extremely small. As for the French translations of his books, many of them are now out of print. However, this was not always the case. Lewis has never been as well-known in France as in Britain or America, but during his lifetime he achieved a certain fame in secular universities, …

Re-Dating An Inklings Photograph, Harry Lee Poe

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Perhaps the most delightful and helpful introductory biography of C. S. Lewis is Walter Hooper’s Through Joy and Beyond: A Pictorial Biography. Published in 1982, it was the first book I reviewed for an academic journal as a freshly minted PhD graduate. The lavish presence of photographs takes the reader into the world of Lewis from his earliest childhood until his death in 1963. Hooper probably knew more about Lewis and his works than any other person, but even Hooper had to make educated guesses from time to time, which very rarely proved wrong.

Dating The Undated Poems In Don King’S Collected Poems Of C. S. Lewis: A Critical Edition, Charlie W. Starr

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Don W. King made a monumental contribution to Lewis studies when he released his Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis: A Critical Edition. Prior to this volume, Lewis’s poetry was scattered among at least four books and much remained unpublished. King gathered all of Lewis’s poetry, apart from a few poetic fragments, into a single volume. Since the book’s publication in 2015, a handful of additional Lewis poems have been discovered. Nevertheless, the fact that the vast majority of Lewis’s poetry now exists in a single volume remains a huge step forward in Lewis scholarship and our ability to appreciate …

“Frankenstein’S Nursery Rhymes” And Other Unpublished Poems By Joy Davidman, Don W. King

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

In 2015 I edited and published A Naked Tree: Joy Davidman’s Love Sonnets to C. S. Lewis and Other Poems. I avoided referring to this volume as the collected poems of Davidman since I decided to withhold publication of twenty-nine poems, primarily because I wanted the attention of readers to focus upon Davidman’s forty-five sonnets to Lewis as well as the poems comprising Letter to a Comrade, the only collection of her verse published during her lifetime. However, I now think it is time to bring these unpublished poems to print. With a few exceptions, I have arranged the poems …

Frontmatter (Volume 19 Issue 1), Bruce R. Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

A Tiny Battle: Conflict, Structure, And Satire In "The Rape Of The Lock", Helen R. Ball

The Confluence

Writing in London during the eighteenth-century, the poet Alexander Pope earned an enduring reputation in literary canon as a master of satire. His well-loved poem The Rape of the Lock exemplifies his biting wit and characteristically satirical heroic rhyme couplets. In my article, I use a formalist literary approach to examine Pope's stylistic, literary, and rhetorical strategies throughout the climactic third canto of the poem. Performing a close reading, this essay analyzes the intricacies of the poem through its use of diction, rhyme, and dramatic subject matter, ultimately arguing that Pope achieves a complex balance of satirizing and sympathizing with …

“But I’M Glad I’M Not A Hog!”: The Pig, The Laborer & “Humanity” In Animal Farm (1945) & The Jungle (1905), Madelyn Bell

English Honors Papers

This thesis places The Jungle and Animal Farm in conversation with one another to examine how each text engages, reframes, and complicates Marxist conceptions of labor, class, and (de)individuality through the figure of the pig. Beginning from the pig’s marked similarity to humans – its intelligence, sociality, and symbolic proximity – the analysis considers how this likeness makes the pig a particularly charged symbol for negotiating the moral and conceptual boundary between human and animal, inviting a reading in which human structures are reflected back through the animal form. Attending each novel’s distinct concern with socialism – Sinclair’s investment in …

"For What Do You Hunger?": Metaphors Of Consumption And The Gothic Female Experience, Olivia G. Wychock

Master’s Theses

“For what do you hunger?”: Metaphors of Consumption and the Gothic Female Experience offers a feminist-forward analysis on the female experience in Gothic literature, specifically through the lens of metaphors of consumption. This thesis examines how, from the Gothic’s inception, women have been the victims of sexual violence and misconduct, rendering them disposable by patriarchal agents. As the Gothic begins to change over the course of the nineteenth century, female protagonists gain agency and move from being completely victimized to playing the villain and, eventually in post-nineteenth-century Gothic, becoming the victor. That is to say that the Gothic both reinforces …

Awakening The Mind: How Secure Attachment Impacts Language Acquisition In Charles Dickens's Literary Orphans, Alaina Gray

Master of Arts in Classical Studies

As a young child, Charles Dickens attached securely to his family. Through his strong literary relationship with his mother, Dickens learned to read well yet experienced a period of parental separation during his blacking factory employment, providing many opportunities to meet and interact with abandoned children, who pervade his novels. Baruch Hochman and Ilja Wachs describe the negative impacts of orphanhood in Dickens: The Orphan Condition. While Hochman and Wachs address the social and economic difficulties faced by Dickens’s literary orphans, they did not connect the orphan condition to impaired cognitive development. Experiencing an excellent literary relationship with his mother, …

"Just Friends:" The Linguistics Of Queerness In Lady Audley's Secret And Carmilla, Kelley A. Peters

English

Many queer studies scholars have debated the legitimacy of queer coding within Victorian literature, such as Marc Milton Ducusin, who wrote Queer Doubles: The Victorian Sensation Novel and English Sexology, and Sharon Marcus, the author of Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. These authors analyze real-life and fictional behaviors of those within Victorian England to argue that queerness is present in certain Victorian works. However, these arguments do not adequately address the linguistic significance of the queer coding present in these works, and they specifically ignore the label of “friend” and its many meanings in Victorian …

Writing Against The War Machine: Wiflred Owen's Poetic Challenge To World War I Pro-War Rhetoric, Elizabeth Woods

Theses and Dissertations

Wilfred Owen, a soldier-poet who fought in World War I, is often labeled an anti-war poet, with some claiming that he was against the war in its entirety. This thesis explores the opinion that Owen is not an anti-war poet but rather that he wrote against anti-pro-war rhetoric. This includes all types of pro-war rhetoric influential in England for recruitment purposes but mainly focuses on poetry that would be published in newspapers for everyday readers to see. Owen seems to specifically resist two types of pro-war rhetoric, the myth of the German barbarian and what he called the old lie. …

The Kinship Power Of Women In Old English Literature, Emily L. Carter

All Master's Theses

This thesis examines several Old English texts to understand how power is portrayed in literature relating to women and their positions as wives, mothers, and daughters. Looking at women characters in Beowulf, Elene, “The Wife’s Lament,” Juliana, and Judith through a New Historicist lens, this thesis attempts to better understand the cultural and social expectations for women in power in Anglo-Saxon England, c. 1000. These women are portrayed as socially intelligent and politically active figures in their communities. The most exemplary women in these texts, this thesis argues, are those who are able to draw upon the …

Modernism’S Wild Child: The Interplay Of Modernist And Children’S Literature, Rachel Riffel

All Master's Theses

Within literary criticism, American and British modernism are often characterized by the disillusioned writers and creators who established an elitist literary community during the early 20^th century. This period is also distinguished by the Harlem Renaissance highlighting Black art, culture, and writing. Gertrude Stein, T. S. Eliot, Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps are well-known for contributing core texts to modernism and the Harlem Renaissance that expressed existential themes and developed experimental techniques. What many readers don’t know, however, is that these authors and many other contemporaries wrote stories and poetry for children. In this thesis, I explore the children’s …

Spear, Perilous Times, And The Bright Sword: Radical Reinventions Of The Arthurian Legend In 2020s Literature, Brigid Flanagan

Honors Theses

The story of King Arthur has been told time and time again, emerging most recently as a major literary fascination for fantasy writers. The huge body of Arthurian literature published in the 20th century has been well-documented. Raymond H. Thompson’s The Return From Avalon surveys nearly two hundred works published from 1882 to 1983, noting trends and common themes that emerge over this collection. Several more scholars have examined modern Arthurian literature within a smaller scope, including Shiloh Carroll who looks into certain trends across both 20th and 21st century texts. Particular works have been the focus of closer analysis, …

What To Do With An Improper Woman: Gender Roles And Their Repercussions In Great Expectations, Abby Shaver

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Mad Or Uncontrollable? Reading Female Madness In Three Gothic Texts, Amy Marie Bueno

Dissertations and Theses

My thesis employs comparative close reading framed by disability studies to analyze representations of female madness in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, and Isabel Allende’s “If You Touched My Heart.” Drawing on theories of socially constructed disability, it argues that Bertha, Antoinette, and Hortensia are framed as “mad women” not through inherent pathology, but through patriarchal violence, colonial domination, and institutional power. By integrating the social model of disability with feminist theory, this thesis examines how women are rendered disabled within societies influenced by Social Darwinism and eugenic ideologies.

This thesis further incorporates Gothic theory and …