C.S. Lewis is perhaps the best known Christian writer of the twentieth century. His fiction for children and adults and his writings as an apologist for Christianity are still widely read, enjoyed and discussed. A scholar of English literature, particularly Medieval and Renaissance, he was an Oxford don and Cambridge professor and also a writer of poetry. Lewis said of his reason for writing, “I wrote the books I should have liked to read, if only I could have got them” (Faces, vii). The editors of Time, in their preface to Till We Have Faces, wrote, “Fortunately for Western literature, C.S. Lewis was superbly endowed with the qualities that make a writer great: wit, wisdom and warmth; formidable erudition, which he never used for erudition’s sake; deep, at times uncomfortably deep, understanding of human nature; and above all, a robust and luminous imagination, the creative grace that Wordsworth called ‘the feeling intellect’” (Faces, vii). Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1898. He had one older brother, Warren, nicknamed Warnie. When Clive Lewis was about four years old, he announced to his family that his name was “Jacksie.” His refusal to answer to any other name meant that he was known as Jack by his family and friends for the rest of his life. His parents were of very different temperaments which he describes in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life: The two families from which I spring were as different in temperament as in origin. My father’s people were true Welshmen, sentimental, passionate, and rhetorical, easily moved both to anger and tenderness; men who laughed and cried a great deal and had not much of the talent for happiness. [My mother’... ... middle of paper ... ... Yours ever, C.S. Lewis (Letters, 44,45) C.S. Lewis died quietly in his home November 22, 1963, the same day as John F. Kennedy. He will live on his works for many generations to come. Workd Cited http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/people/cslewis_1.shtml#h17 Lewis, C.S. A Grief Observed. Bantam Books: NewYork, 1976. Ibid. Letters to Children. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1995. Ibid. The Screwtape Letters. Simon & Schuster: New York, 1996. Ibid. Surprised by Joy. Harcourt, Brace, and World, Inc.: New York, 1955. Ibid. Till We Have Faces. Time Life Books: New York, 1966. Lurie, Alison. “The Passion of C.S. Lewis.” The New York Review of Books(NYRB): http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2006/feb/09/the-passion-of-cs-lewis.
Some works show their true colors right away. Gene Edward Veith’s book, Reading Between The Lines, addresses philosophical ideas, literary sub genres, and reader criticisms in order to ascertain a Christian’s role in literature. He also goes through various historical periods and examines their more prominent works and schools of thought. While a select few of his conclusions about Christianity in relation to the arts have merit, others contain more damaging implications. Specifically, his statements regarding television represent inaccurate and offensive thinking.
John L. Lewis was born in the town of Lucas, Iowa on February 12th, 1880. His parents are immigrants from Wales. When John was fifteen, he started working as a miner in Illinois. Between 1898 and 1907, John was voted to be a local representative to the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in the year 1906. Lewis also tried farming, construction work, and owning a small business, before joining the labor movement in 1907. The United Mine Workers of America , aka the UMWA, later elected John as branch secretary. In 1909, he served as president of the Panama local of the United Mine Workers of America. In 1910, he would be elected as an Illinois representative on UMW's state legislature. He took a national position in the American Federation of Labor (AFL), as an organizer, in 1911. Lewis departed from the mines in the year 1911, to become an organizer for the American Federation of Labor. In 1916, Lewis was the UMWA president and appointed chief arithmetician for the union. In the year 1919, three years after his election, he became the president of the largest trade union in America in 1920. He held this position until 1960, when he retired.
Anne Bradstreet’s inability to perfect her work before it was released frustrated her to the point where she internalizes the book’s imperfections as a reflection of herself. Bradstreet uses an extended metaphor of a mother and a child to compare the relationship between herself as the author and her book. Rather than investing her spirit in God, she repeatedly focuses on trying to improve the quality of her writing with no success, “I washed thy face, but more defects I saw” (Bradstreet 13). Like a mother protecting her child, Bradstreet’s attempts to prevent critics from negatively analyzing her work of art (20). Her continuous obsession about people’s opinions consumed in the Earthly world and essentially distracted her from developing a spiritual relationship with God. Bradstreet was enveloped by her dissatisfaction with her to the point of ridiculing herself, “Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble mind” (1). It was obvious that her mind and spiritual
John L. Lewis was born on the 2nd of February in 1880 in Lucas, Iowa and he’s was born in to a family of immigrant welch parents which worked in coal mining and trade unionism. By the age of 15 John began working in coal mining and 2 years later he married his wife Myrta Bell, she influenced him to read many things which would later come in to his aid in his public speeches as flowery phrases, Shakespearean quotations, and mixed metaphors. He soon move to souther...
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make them appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and
Even though Jim Lewis was in World War 2, he led an average American life. He raised four kids in the Piedmont of North Carolina, with the values of love and respect. He influenced others through his hard work, dedication to his country, and his loyalty to his family. He voluntarily joined World War 2 and was a part of the Automobile Industry for 20+ years. Through this historical biography, you will learn about his life in the war, involvement of the crash in the S.S. Uruguay, and the car industry of the 1950’s-60’s.
Jackie Robinson was born on January 31, 1919 in Georgia. On this day, a legend arrived. Jackie was raised by his mother, and his mother alone. His father left before Jackie was born, and he didn’t remember one thing about him. Jackie had many siblings, brothers and sisters. Jackie had an older brother named Matthew, who was also very athletic. Jackie’s mother tried the best she could to raise these boys right, and teach them that no matter what the whites called them...they were special.
In his early life, there were many factors that began to influence his desire to write. Lewis was born on November 29, 1898. His father, Albert Lewis, was a solicitor. . His mother, Flora August Lewis, was a clergyman’s daughter. Both of his parents loved literature, therefore his home was always filled with books. He grew up in Belfast, located in Northern Ireland. Lewis was raised by his father, after his mother died from cancer when he was a child. Lewis loved animals, and began to develop a great appreciation of nature. Even though he was a child, he began questioning the world and its limits. One of the influences that formed his imagination was the countryside and landscape in Ireland. In 1918, Lewis was sent to boarding school in Watford, England. He did not have a very pleasant experience in school, and often struggled with grammar. However, this changed once he began to be privately tutored. Lewis received a scholarship to Oxford in 1916. Lewis fell in loved with Oxford. He admired the beautiful architecture, culture, and education. On June 8, 1917, Lewis enlisted in the British army. As he got older, Lewis became...
John Robert Lewis was born on February 21, 1940 in Troy, Alabama. The son of a sharecropping family, he resided on the family farm. Subject to the regular Jim Crow mindset of the South, he attend a segregated public school in Pike County, Alabama. Early on, he was influenced by civil rights role models such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. His family on the other hand, believed that there was no use trying to change the culture of the South, and advised him to stay out of trouble. He attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and graduated from the American Baptist Theological Seminary which adds stories that he told of preaching to chickens for practice. Preaching to chickens aside, Lewis’ interest in the Civil Rights Movement continued to push him.
C.S. Lewis was a very joyful man, and his joyfulness shone through in all he did. He would assign nicknames to his family members and friends, like Robert E. Havard the useless Quack or as he called his walking companion A.C. Harwood, the Lord of the Walks. Another glimpse of his joyful spirit is when he finished his first day at Oxford and wrote to his dad, The place has surpassed my wildest dreams. I never saw anything so beautiful. Finally, we see his joy when he wrote to one of his friends right after his marriage, Its funny having at 59 the sort of happiness most men have at their twenties Thou hast kept the good wine till now. C.S. Lewis was a very joyful man from whom people could learn a lot.
A Christian, when faced with the challenge of writing, finds himself in a dilemma: how is he to complete the task? Should he create an allegory? Should he try to teach a lesson reflecting God’s glory? Or should he follow secular trends and current desires in literature? To this, many Christians would say, “Certainly not!” Dorothy L. Sayers and Flannery O’Connor both aim to answer the first question of any Christian writer: How do I write a story with my beliefs?
...e, is the end; Despite all the odds Lewis highlighted important truths of Christian faith through the story of a demon who is not good at being a demon. Wormwood’s helper shows us those truths in thirty-one irrational letters. A message of light brought forth through darkness.
In this analysis, we will be looking at just how Flannery O'Connor accomplished this seemingly impossible task, non-didactic Christian fiction, by examining elements of faith, elements of style, and thematic elements in her writing. While secondary sources are included for perspective, I have focused primarily upon Miss O'Connor's own essays and speeches in my examination of the writer's motivations, attitudes, and technique, most of which are contained in the posthumous collection Mystery and Manners. Unlike some more cryptic writers, O'Connor was happy to discuss the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of her stories, and this candor is a godsend for the researcher that seeks to know what "makes the writer tick."
Gibbons, Stella. "Imaginative Writing." Light on C.S. Lewis. Ed. Jocelyn Gibb. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1965. Print.
C.S. Lewis was the 20th century’s most popular proponent of faith based on reason. As a child, he created an imaginary world where personified animals came to life, and later, he wrote the book, Chronicles of Narnia. How did he transform from a boy fascinated with anthropomorphic animals into a man of immense faith? His transformation to the Christian religion happened as his fame began to flourish. People wrote him, asking him about his claims about the truth of Christianity (Belmonte, Kevin). As I attended the drama of Freud’s Last Session, I was engrossed into the plot of the play and was constantly thinking about how it pertained to the objectives of the World Literature class. I not only connected the content of the play to its context, but I also reached out to apply the context to a discussion on a broader scale. I then discovered why the context of literature is imperative for true understanding of the w...