English Language and Literature Commons^™

Back Matter (Volume 2, Issue 1), Grayson Carter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Exhibition, Bruce R. Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Personal Heresy: A Controversy, Bruce R. Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of The Personal Heresy: A Controversy. By C. S. Lewis and E. M. W. Tillyard. Edited by Joel Heck, with an Introduction by Bruce L. Edwards. Austin, Tex.: Concordia University Press, 2008. ISBN: 978-1-8818481-0-3. Pp. xix + 129. $19.95

Review Essay: Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens In The Imagination Of C. S. Lewis (Higgins), Sørina Higgins

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. By Michael Ward. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978- 0-19-53138701. Pp. xii + 347. $29.95

Review Essay: Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens In The Imagination Of C. S. Lewis (Connell), Charles W. Connell

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Review of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis. By Michael Ward. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978- 0-19-53138701. Pp. xii + 347. $29.95.

C.S. Lewis: Literary Criticism And Critical Theory A Primary And Secondary Bibliography, James P. Helfers

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Excerpt: "A major problem with compiling a focused bibliography of texts related to C. S. Lewis’ work as a literary critic and critical theorist is that critical theory as a concept is a relatively recent invention. One can think of critical theory as the explicit consideration of the ontological and epistemological status of objects of literary study, and as the philosophical consideration of various aspects of the interpretation of texts (hermeneutics). Although a number of philosophical writings since the Greek Classical Period have significance for critical theory, the idea that an interpretive approach to texts can be considered philosophically probably …

Toward A Narnian Valuation Of Nature: Participatory Ontology, Jeff Sellars

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Lewis’ appreciation of nature begs the question: from where does the natural world gain its purpose and meaning? Lewis’ valuation of nature can be understood perhaps best through participatory ontology: the immanent world is valued and saved only through the participation of the divine; the lower life is brought up into the higher life. This view can be seen very openly and unmistakably throughout The Chronicles of Narnia, where the natural Narnian world of plants, animals, trees, and creatures of all kinds are celebrated, and some are eventually included in the New Narnia.

Diversity In Times Of Adversity: Sounding A Horn In Narnia, D. G. Kehl

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Why, one might ask, does Lewis go to such great lengths to specify twelve different varieties of animals—“all you variety of creatures”—if not to stress diversity? In Letters to Malcolm Lewis wrote: “If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them.”

Front Matter (Volume 2, Issue 1), Grayson Carter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

Backmatter (Volume 1, Issue 1), Grayson Carter

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

Review Essay: Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis Can Train Us To Wrestle With The Modern And Postmodern World, William Gentrup

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

A lengthy review of Lewis Agonistes: How C. S. Lewis Can Train Us to Wrestle with the Modern and Postmodern World. By Louis Markos. Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2003.

ISBN 0-8054-2778-3. Pp. xv + 174. $19.99 [paper].

Grooving A Symbol: Turkish Delight In Narnia, Del Kehl

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Excerpt: Imagine yourself a writer living in Britain during the late 1940s. You are writing a book for children, but you believe that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then, and that a children’s story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children’s story. The challenge before you is to choose something a witch might offer enticingly to a boy of ten or eleven, most likely some delicious viand, to symbolize temptation, solicitation to evil. What would it be? This was the challenge facing C. S. Lewis as he wrote The Lion, …

A Time For Joy: The Ancestry And Apologetic Force Of C.S. Lewis' Sehnsucht, James P. Helfers

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Excerpt: "In sum, it is clear that Lewis owes a great debt to Wordsworth’s idea of Joy, a debt he acknowledges explicitly through the title of his autobiography. Their views of the experience have much in common: for both it is an intense long- ing, for both it undergirds their sense of the reality of an eternal realm, as well as guiding them toward either virtue (in Wordsworth’s case) or a contemplation of and belief in the eternal (in Lewis’ case). Both of their experiences connect, ei- ther explicitly or implicitly, with the philosophical notion of the sublime. There are …

Towards A Literary History Of Quaker Writing In The Atlantic World, Jay David Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Among eighteenth-century Quaker writers, John Woolman was idiosyncratic, as illustrated by the fact that in his journal he recorded an ac-count of his own death. Needless to say, this was not usually done. Instead, it was conventional for posthumously published Quaker journals to include not only an autobiographical narrative of spiritual development but also additional material written by qualified Friends offering further testimony and giving details about how and when the author died. The first printing of Woolman’s journal in his posthumous Works (1774) is accompanied by such material about his 1772 death in York, England, but this was not …

Environmental Aesthetics And Environmental Justice In Jonathan Edwards’S Personal Narrative And John Woolman’S Journal, Jay David Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

This essay examines the relationship between Christian theology, environmental aesthetics, and environmental justice in colonial America. As opposed to the work of secular writers from the early republic like J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur and Thomas Jefferson, the Christian environmental aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards and John Woolman have potential to address questions of environmental justice in American literary history, such as tenant exploitation, African enslavement, and Indigenous displacement. Edwards, however, worked in a pastoral literary tradition, which limited his ability to imagine environmental justice due to his commitment to the doctrine of election. Woolman, on the other hand, worked …

John Woolman, Jay D. Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

John Woolman (b. 1720-d. 1772), a Quaker shopkeeper, tailor, and farmer from West Jersey, traveled extensively throughout colonial America as an itinerant minister and produced writings on the most important social problems of the era. Woolman was part of a group of ministers working for increased discipline and broad reform among Friends. He cared deeply about the right conduct and purity of Quaker meetings for worship, and these concerns informed his social thought, as did his various livelihoods. His experience selling goods from his store and the produce of his farm made him increasingly aware of how the transatlantic economy …

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, …

William Penn’S Imperial Georgic And The Vernacular Landscapes Of Pennsylvania In Eighteenth-Century Quaker Journals, Jay David Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

This essay analyzes changes in the way Quaker writers represented the landscape of Pennsylvania, particularly the economic features of its built environment, over time. I argue that the promotional writing of William Penn constituted an “official” represent at ion of the landscape, using the genre of imperial georgic to highlight the colony’s productive and lucrative potential for an audience of investors while minimizing the role of indentured servitude, African enslavement, and Indigenous dis-possession in the process of economic development. Eighteenth- century Quaker reformers, however, developed a more “vernacular” portrayal of the landscape that was attentive to the privations of those …

Ricke And Chus' "The Faithful Imagination: Papers From The 2018 Frances White Ewbank Colloquium On C. S. Lewis & Friends" (Book Review), James Sauer

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

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 …

“‘Faith’ Is A Fine Invention”: Emily Dickinson’S Critique Of Empiricism, Harrison Dietzman

Faculty Publications - Department of English

In opposition to those who might read Emily Dickinson’s opus as emblematic of nineteenth-century empiricism, or at least the work of a poet enthralled with and enchanted by modern science, a close examination of Dickinson’s poems demonstrates her attention to the constructedness of empirical science. The roots of Dickinson’s examination of empiricism lies in her exploration of selfhood and the relationship between experience and knowledge. As such, Dickinson’s critique of empiricism is contained within a critique of secularizing visions of human autonomy. In a few isolated poems Dickinson explicitly addresses empiricism, but on the whole she prefers to approach empiricism …

When The Worst People Are The Best Rhetoricians: (Mis)Using Rhetoric In C. S. Lewis’S The Last Battle, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

In discussing John Milton’s manipulation of the reader in Paradise Lost, C. S. Lewis comments generally on the art of rhetoric: “I do not think (and no great civili-zation has ever thought) that the art of the rhetorician is necessarily vile. It is in itself noble, though of course, like most arts, it can be wickedly used” (53). From comments in his letters and essays, we know that Lewis thought frequently about his own work as a Christian apologist, concerned that he pursue truth in his arguments rather than trying to win an argument at all costs. In fact, he …

"Fault Lines In American Identity" Review Essay, Harrison Dietzman

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Anna Sorokin, an émigré fashion student of modest means, became a very wealthy woman simply by pretending to be one. Her brief life of the rich and famous abruptly crashed down when she racked up too much debt, but not before she successfully executed a series of con-jobs that netted her hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and left friends and associates with bills in the tens of thousands of dollars. After her conviction on three counts of grand larceny and her sentencing to four to twelve years in prison, Ms. Sorokin expressed to The New York Times that …

Reviewed Work: Christianizing Egypt. Syncretism And Local Worlds In Late Antiquity By David Frankfurter, Dana Robinson

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

David Frankfurter’s newest work takes a fresh look at the landscape of local religious activity in late antique Egypt. Frankfurter expands on the theoretical model he offered in Religion in Roman Egypt (Princeton, 1998), which conceptualized the late antique transformations of Egyptian religion as a shift in idiom and social location, from large temple centers to households and local experts, rather than a decline in traditional piety. Here he changes his perspective from the continuity of traditional religion into the Christian era, to examine the creation of a local and regional Christianity in the fifth and sixth centuries.

A Difference Of Degree: Sayers And Lewis On The Creative Imagination (Chapter In The Faithful Imagination), Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Excerpt: "Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis were writers who thought deeply about the creative imagination, the creative process, and the relation of these to their Christian faith. Both were practitioners, as well as theorists, producing multiple works of fiction, drama, apologetics, and poetry. Both wrote for a variety of audiences including scholarly and popular and believed that literary works could be entertaining as well as edifying, could both delight and teach, as the classical and renaissance writers put it. Finally, both authors addressed the creative imagination in their essays, books, and letters. While a comprehensive treatment of their …

“Friend Thou Art Often In My Remembrance”, Jay D. Miller

Faculty Publications - Department of English

A recently discovered letter by Elizabeth Ashbridge expands the very small archive of documents related to this important Quaker minister, gives scholars a better understanding of the circles in which she moved, and offers an occasion for reflection on epistolary writing in the eighteenth century. Written to her fellow Quaker Margaret Bowne, the letter fascinates as a dense record of the overlapping transatlantic, commercial, and ministerial connections Friends maintained during the period. It also illustrates the persistence of Pauline epistolary tropes in the context of an ostensibly “secular” familiar letter, reminding scholars of the pitfalls of thinking of the secular …

"Companions In Shipwreck: J. R. R. Tolkien's Female Friendships" Chapter In Apprehending Love Edited By Olli-Pekka Vainio And Pekka Kärkkäinen, Jason Lepojärvi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

No abstract provided.

"'[A] Wholly New And Original Poetic Genius': Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Emily Dickinson, And Literary Immortality", Harrison Dietzman

Faculty Publications - Department of English

Beyond Higginson's personal friendship with Dickinson, his literary criticism—much of which Dickinson may have read in The Atlantic Monthly—and his editing of her poems weave a narrative about the United States' poetry to which Dickinson is the logical conclusion. Higginson relentlessly attacked Whitman, (who he perceived to be a degenerate, self-promoting charlatan), and used his literary criticism to extol characteristics, personal and poetic, that carved out a place for Dickinson, or a poet like her, in the American literary tradition. Higginson's criticism persistently seeks to answer one question: in America, what is a poetic genius? Judging by Higginson's decades-long …

The Simple Math Of Writing Well: Writing For The 21st Century, Jennie A. Harrop

Open Textbooks

Writing guides abound, but The Simple Math of Writing Well is one of a kind. Readers will find its practical approach affirming, encouraging, and informative, and its focus on the basics of linguistic structure releases 21st-century writers to embrace the variety of mediums that define our internet-connected world. As Harrop reminds us in the opening chapters of her book, we write more today than ever before in history: texts, emails, letters, blogs, reports, social media posts, proposals, etc. The Simple Math of Writing Well is the first guide that directly addresses the importance of writing well in the Google age.

C. S. Lewis' Ambivalence Toward Rhetoric And Style, Gary L. Tandy

Faculty Publications - Department of English

While C. S. Lewis has been called by many names (scholar, teacher, speaker, philosopher, literary critic, and theologian, to name only a few), rhetorician is the name he often used to describe himself, and, based upon his life and body of work, it is perhaps one of the most appropriate titles for him. As James Como asserts, "[Lewis'] rhetorical temper provided a compulsiveness and a posture that could be resolved only in argument. Training, taste, and talent equipped him for an academic and apologetic career, to the exclusion of nearly all others ... Lewis was the quintessential Homo rhetoricus, knew …