The Stance of a Last Survivor : C. S. Lewis and the Modern World (Chapter One of The Rhetoric of Certitude)

Excerpt: As professor and scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature, C. S. Lewis wrote and published well-respected and influential literary criticism. At the same time, following his conversion to Christianity around 1930, he felt a duty to apply his argumentative and philosophical skills to the writing of Christian apologetics-defenses of traditional Christian principles against the attacks of skeptics and religious liberals. More important, Lewis lived in an age largely hostile to his attitudes and thought, both in literature and Christianity. In a period that s.aw such startling literary productions as The Waste Land and Ulysses, Lewis chose to defend traditional literary forms such as epic poetry and allegory. And in a century enamored with the theories of Darwin, Freud, Nietzsche, and Jung, Lewis offered a standard of mere Christianity, accepting, without apology, the sinfulness of man and God\u27s supernatural involvement in human affairs. Thus, Lewis was faced with an extremely difficult rhetorical problem: how does a writer communicate his ideas to his audience when every social, cultural, and intellectual force is at work to undermine the very concepts he presents? A study of Lewis\u27s nonfiction prose reveals clearly the rhetorical interplay of author, subject, and audience and the ways in which these elements manifest themselves in the style of the prose works

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

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 to the “Anglican lay literary and theological writers C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, and Dorothy L. Sayers” (2)

C. S. Lewis\u27 Ambivalence toward Rhetoric and Style

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\u27] 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 it, acquitted himself superbly at being just that, and yet remained deeply troubled by his own efficacy

Review of Dorothy L. Sayers, A Biography: Death, Dante, and Lord Peter Wimsey

Gary L. Tandy: Review of Colin Duriez, Dorothy L. Sayers, A Biography: Death, Dante, and Lord Peter Wimsey (Summertown, Oxford: Lion Hudson Limited, 2021). 224 pages. $14.95. ISBN 9780745956923