C. S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Literary Theory, Literature

Nothing Yet in Its True Form: Shifting Portrayals of Female Villains in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia

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Many of C. S. Lewis’ most profound experiences were literary. From a young age, Lewis was a voracious and engaged reader who immersed himself in Classic and Romantic literature and ancient mythologies. The characters and ideas he encountered in his readings left deep and lasting impressions on how he viewed himself and the reality around him. What depictions and symbols of females in literature affected Lewis’ understanding of females? How do his literary ideas of the feminine determine the female characters he creates? Are Lewis’ experiences of females in literature consistent with the life experiences of real women? How do these multiple influences manifest themselves in female representations in the Chronicles of Narnia?

These questions are significant, considering that an estimated sixty-five million people have read C. S. Lewis’ multi-volume Chronicles of Narnia. It is safe to assume, simply on the basis of demographics, that roughly one half of these readers are female. What do these stories, written by a man who “no sound delights…more than male laughter” (W. H. Lewis 14), say to female readers about what femininity is and about what is valuable about females? With what sorts of characters can female readers identify in Lewis’ stories, and how are female characters represented?

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Aesthetics, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, Science, Theology

Physics and Christian Theology: Beauty, a Common Dialect?

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As the literature for this Oxbridge 2005 conference notes, “C.S. Lewis once said, ‘the sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.’” Lewis is not alone in his quest. While one might expect such company as writers, artists, musicians, and philosophers it might be surprising to discover a stellar contingent of Nobel Prize winners and other significant physicists along for the journey. It appears, as we will see in the following accounts, that beauty has long been the unsung companion of great discoveries in the physical sciences. Taking a look at the role beauty plays in the realms of both physics and theology could point the way to a place where Christian theology and the modern science of physics might have a conversation profitable to both disciplines.

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C. S. Lewis, Education

Becoming Fully Human: Education as Transformation in the Writings of C. S. Lewis and Paulo Freire

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Recently, two cultural analysts have written books that talk about the future of humanity. Thomas Friedman, foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, in his book The World is Flat, explains many of the consequences of globalization on our world. In a recent meeting of the National Governor’s Association, he discussed advances in technology so powerful that anyone with a computer in Beijing or Bangalore can plug in and compete with anyone else in the world, and what will happen if we grow complacent in our education of today’s young people. Joel Garreau, a Washington Post Editor and cultural analyst, in Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing our Minds, Our Bodies, and What it means to be Human gives an overview of the implication of four technologies that are growing exponentially. He calls these technologies GRIN: Genetics, Robotics, Information, and Nanotechnology. He explains that these technologies are bringing the ability to enhance memory with pills or bioengineer our children or have robots fight our battles; outcomes of which can be what he describes as Heaven, Hell, or Prevail. What both these recent books bring to light as they define these incredible paradigm shifts is the need for a view of humanity that is rooted in ethics and values. In addition they pose questions about what we are doing in education to give the next generation the resources and stronghold of values they need to make sure that the growth in power of technology and science does not overwhelm our humanity.

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C. S. Lewis, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, Philosophy

Lewis’s Rejection of Nihilism: The Tao and the Problem of Moral Knowledge

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C. S. Lewis published The Abolition of Man in 1944 in the midst of World War II. We can perhaps imagine the ominous and suggestive nature of this timing. But, as readers soon discovered, the book was not at all about the War, or Hitler’s eugenics, or the looming nuclear threat. Lewis’s real subject is the soul and its education. According to Lewis, the real enemy—more dangerous than any nation, weapon, or science—is a philosophy: nihilism. It is perhaps a bit misleading to say that nihilism is a “post-modern” philosophy, for there have been nihilists and advocates of nihilism as long as there have been men. But it is true that this philosophy has come to be more widely preached and practiced in our time than ever before. In The Abolition of Man Lewis both explains and combats this modern (post-modern) development.

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Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, History, Western Civilization

Hearts And Minds Aflame For Christ: Irish Monks—A Model For Making All Things New in the 21st Century

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One of the most dramatic transformations of culture in the history of Western civilization was accomplished by humble, poor, foreign missionary teachers. Irish monks—C. S. Lewis’ forebears—trudged their way across Scotland, England, and the European Continent. And in their wake they left a lasting legacy of faith, of learning, and, indeed, of civilization.

Over the centuries between A.D. 550 and 1300, scores of Irish monks left their homeland and spread out across Europe, preaching the Gospel to violent, lawless pagans, teaching Scripture, literature and the arts and sciences to kings and peasants alike and establishing monastic communities which served as centers for not only evangelism and discipleship, but for education and culture. Their teaching brought God’s Word and civilization back to a Europe which had been conquered and ruined by barbarians.

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Literature

Priestly Poets: Donne and Southwell as Writers for God

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Henry Ward Beecher once said, “The strength of a man consists in finding out the way God is going, and going that way.” Both John Donne and Robert Southwell would likely agree with this assessment, though, ironically, their lives took strikingly different paths from one another. Donne and Southwell were both born into staunchly Roman Catholic families in the late 16th Century, at a time when Catholicism was illegal in England. However, Donne eventually renounced his denomination in favor of the more popularly accepted Anglicanism while Southwell, even in the face of oppression, remained an underground Catholic and was eventually executed for his beliefs. Although both poets turned their words to Holy Matters, Donne wrote from within the system, whereas Southwell used his words to subvert it. Comparing Southwell’s The Burning Babe to Donne’s Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward casts into sharp relief the poets’ conflicting perspectives, but it also accents the remarkable similarities that they nevertheless retain toward one another. Although their methods and style may differ, it is clear that Donne and Southwell are seeking the same God.

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Aesthetics, Architecture, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty

Emancipating Architecture: Toward a More Serious Aesthetic

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Contemporary architecture has been trivialized spurred on by a profit-driven construction industry on the one hand and aspiring intellectual designers on the other. At a time of increasing social inequality, threats of nuclear proliferation, widespread spiritual and moral fatigue, disintegration of the social nucleus, lifestyle- and environment-dependant illnesses of epidemic proportions, alarming frequency and intensity of natural disasters, terrorism, global warming, deforestation, air pollution, acid rain, ozone depletion, the extinction of species, limited natural resources and a dwindling food supply, architecture has either been absent or responded with inconsequential metaphors.

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J. R. R. Tolkien, Literature

Humble Heroism: Frodo Baggins as Christian Hero in The Lord of the Rings

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How does one create a hero at a time when heroes have fallen out of favor? Much of the literature of the twentieth century shows an ambivalence about this question. During the bloodiest century the world had ever known, a time of ever increasing disillusionment, the conventional hero became an increasingly rare figure in literature and the “anti-hero” increasingly popular. Against this background, J. R. R. Tolkien envisioned a character who embodied an old-fashioned ideal of heroism—but not at all in a conventional way.

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Music, Music Theory

Representations of Beauty in Choral Music at the Beginning of the 20th and 21st Centuries: Schoenberg’s “Friede auf Erden” and Lauridsen’s “O Nata Lux”

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Concepts of musical beauty change over time. The origins of harmony—influenced by the Pythagorean mathematical ideal of whole-number ratios—adored perfect intervals in parallel motion. By the time of the Renaissance, imperfect consonances were the aesthetic model. They displaced consecutive perfect intervals with such thoroughness that even today, beginning students of music theory are prohibited from writing parallel perfect fifths and octaves as they learn to master the principles of common-practice music.

To be sure, aesthetic ideals at the beginning of the 20th century differ from those governing today. We have heard medieval, Renaissance, Classical, Romantic, and a plethora of 20th century styles of music. And yet, some aspects of musical beauty transcend time. My purpose in this paper is to begin exploring these ideals of beauty by comparing passages from two compositions written almost a century apart. In doing so, I will focus on the music’s structure, rather than the less tangible affect that music has upon the listener. The sources of the two passages are Arnold Schoenberg’s “Friede auf Erden” of 1907, and Morten Lauridsen’s “O Nata Lux” of 1997.

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Featured, Science

Science and Christian Faith: Conflict or Cooperation?

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The popular image of the relationship between science and Christian faith is one of antagonism, conflict, and even warfare. By contrast, I will attempt to show that despite some episodes of tension, the overall relationship between science and biblical theism has been largely cooperative and fruitful. We’ll look first at the origins of modern science and the origins of the conflict thesis; then at the Galileo affair and the reactions of Christian scientists and theologians to the theory of evolution. Finally, I’ll make a few remarks on the complementary relationship between science and Christian faith.

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Aesthetics, Architecture, Environment

Stewardship as Architectural Aesthetic

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At the current point in history, there is an appropriate concern for the environment, global warming, pollution, and the consumption of natural resources. Although the theories vary and multiple causes are cited, very few people would promote an absence of any environmental goals. Most people care enough about future generations to accept the notion of sustainability as presented by Gro Brundtland: “Meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”1 I will leave it to others to write further about why this came to pass, who is to blame, and how bad things are. In my role as a professor of environmental controls in Architecture, I have spent a lifetime teaching students the physical aspects of how to go about building sustainable architecture. But I have also seen the profession of Architecture largely ignore the energy crisis and continue to resist addressing issues of sustainability in the architectural movements and styles which are popular among academics, critics, or the general public. They are more interested in aesthetics, and to some extent that is appropriate, but it leaves us with only one option: to define aesthetics in a fashion which incorporates the goals and procedures of energy conservation and sustainability as a whole.

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J. R. R. Tolkien, Literature

“My Precious”: Gollum vs. the Pearl Jeweler

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The quest to recover a lost piece of priceless jewelry seems a natural topic for a good adventure story. Yet when the aggrieved quester discovers that the prize is not his, that it is not as valuable as he believed, and that he will die if he tries to regain it, the reader may begin to wonder if the story is really about adventure after all. Such is the case with Pearl, translated by J. R. R. Tolkien, and the story of Gollum that begins in The Hobbit and continues in The Lord of the Rings.1 Both the narrator of Pearl, who identifies himself as a jeweler (252), and Gollum must undertake a journey to find the thing each calls “my precious,” only to discover that he cannot reclaim it and live. The choice each character makes determines his eternal destiny; taken together, the moral lesson portrayed by both quests forms a powerful challenge to the reader.

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