Oxbridge 2008
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C.S. Lewis Summer Institute
The Self & the Search for Meaning
Full Conference : July 28-August 8 |
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Week 1 (Oxford) : July 28-August 2 |
Week 2 (Cambridge): August 3-8 |
Seminars |
OX-05 and CAM-05 ~ “The Soul, the Search, and the Meaning of Love: An Integrative Approach to The Four Loves and Till We Have Faces” with Andrew Lazo (available for academic credit)
Owen Barfield claims (and Lewis essentially agrees) that all of Lewis’s thinking is present in any of his writings. Assuming the truth of this principle, we will explore two of Lewis’s last books, The Four Loves and Till We Have Faces along with Lewis’s recently-published letters, and each student’s self-selected readings of other Lewis writing in order to explore how Lewis helps us grapple with the soul, longing, and love. This will accomplish two goals: first, it will allow us to attempt some synthesis of Lewis’s thought and writing from the vantage point of the end of his career, and second, it will cause us to explore and apply one of the central underlying themes of Lewis’s work, how the self longs for a meaning only found in the love of God. Although the majority of this course will devote itself to understanding what Lewis said and implied in the texts we consider, it will also highlight practical and, where appropriate, devotional application of what Lewis taught.
Scholar and speaker Andrew Lazo holds an M.A. in English from Rice University, where he was Jacob K. Javits Fellow in the Humanities, and a B.A. in English (with Honors) from the University of California, Davis. He also teaches Mythology at the University of Houston. Andrew has published several articles and book reviews on C. S. Lewis and other Inklings and is co-editor of Changed Lives: C. S. Lewis as Spiritual Mentor, forthcoming on Baker Books. A nationally-known speaker on the Inklings, Andrew speaks regularly in churches and schools and at events for the C. S. Lewis Foundation. He is currently working on two book projects, one unlocking the mysteries of Till We Have Faces and the other doing primary research on Friendship in the Coalbiters, Tolkien’s Old Norse reading group.
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