C. S. LEWIS

Syllabus

C. S. LEWIS was one of the earlier critics of literary modernism and social science, rejecting the notion that literature and society should be based on ideas imported from the natural sciences. In opposition the standard narratives of historical progress he offered what he called “story,” or what post-moderns now call “fabulation.” The stories Lewis told, while set in specific cultural circumstances, were always intended to underscore the broad continuity of human experience across history and geography.

Lewis was a man of his time and a bit of a modernist himself, as seen his commitment to “make it new": like Yeats, Pound, or Eliot, he refashioned older works for modern readers, the difference lying in his pre- (or post-) modern emphasis on narrative as a literary device. In this seminar we follow his career as a novelist, early to late, as he refashioned classic works of 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th century fiction into fables for modern times. To better elucidate what he was about, we will read his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, a set of radio lectures published as The Abolition of Man, and some of his seminal critical essays.

Students in the seminar will give oral presentations exploring how Lewis adapts his source texts; these can make use of visual materials (book illustrations, for example). There will also be three short assignments (3-5 pages) examining how these exchanges worked in the context of debates over modernism. One of these shorter essays can be used as the basis for a 15pp seminar paper that considers the formal and rhetorical strategies Lewis adopts in one of his polemical romances: why infuse such literary and philosophical weight into (then) such sub-literary genres as allegory, fairy tale, and science fiction? How did readers and critics respond?

Evaluation: presentation and participation: 20%, short essays, 40%, seminar paper, 40%.

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