Informational speech on C.S.Lewis

Below is a speech I will be giving in my public speaking class next Thursday. Let me know what you think about it. I am open to suggestion for improving it. Just remember it is 6-10 min. long so not all the interesting stuff I wanted to put in would fit. Also, the headings I have put in are required in that order. Enjoy


Attention Getter:

200 million. That’s the number of C.S.lewis books sold over the last 70 years, according to publishing numbers. Less than 100 authors have sold over 100 million books; Steven King, Charles Dickens, and the author of Harry Potter are in this list, but who is C.S.Lewis and why are his books so popular?

Credentials and relevancy:

I’ve been a C.S.Lewis fan for years, ever since reading his Chronicles of Narnia fantasy series as a kid. Since then, I’ve read nearly all of his 34 books and numerous biographies. Part of the answer to why he is so popular is that he is fun and easy to read. But what you will learn today is that Lewis wrote a great variety of books that have appealed to a great variety of people. You’ve probably heard of, or even read, the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis’s wildly popular children’s fantasies, but if you think you’re too old for that, Lewis wrote some other bestsellers that might be right down your ally.

Purpose statement and preview of the main points:

Today you’ll hear what some of those books are as we look at 3 aspects of C.S.Lewis’s life: C.S.Lewis the Scholar, C.S.Lewis the Christian, and C.S.Lewis the novelist.

1st. main point:

First, Let’s look at what sort of scholar C.S.Lewis was. As a boy growing up in Ireland at the beginning of the 20st. century, Lewis liked nothing better than reading books in the family’s attic. This love of reading led him to become a student at Oxford University, where he studied literature and philosophy. Immediately after graduating, Lewis began teaching and writing on these subjects. Eventually he became the chair of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University. He was such an expert in this field that he was asked to write the official Oxford History of 16th. Century Literature.

2nd. main point:

Besides his career as a brilliant literary scholar, Lewis had another interest: Religion. I mentioned that you would hear about C.S.Lewis the Christian but C.S.Lewis wasn’t always a Christian. As a teenager and college student he was an outspoken atheist. This began to change, however, when he met a fellow professor whom I think most of you have probable heard of: J.R.R.Tolkien. Just like Lewis, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books have sold 300 million copies, enough for everyone in the United States to have one.

One evening in 1931 the two friends got to talking about one of there favorite subjects: religion. Lewis the atheist arguing against it, Tolkien, a Christian, explaining why he believed. According to George Sayers, a friend and later biographer, they walked into the Oxford college rose garden and kept talking, and talking, and talking…until 3 in the morning! The end of the story is that Lewis became a Christian. Any Lord of the Rings fan will be interested to know that Lewis’s funny and profound bestseller, The Screwtape Letters, was dedicated to Tolkien. This book is the imaginary correspondence between a high-ranking devil and his young apprentice tempter Screwtape. It’s funny but has some keen observations about humanity as well. You don’t have to be a Christian to enjoy it. In fact, very few of Lewis’s quote “Christian” books were written for Christians Since he was once an atheist, Lewis wrote many books to those people asking the same questions about God and the meaning of life that he once asked. Mere Christianity, a [citation needed] million bestseller is one of these books that answer some tough questions about Christianity. The Problem of Pain asks why—if there is a God—he would allow suffering in the world.

3rd. main point:

So far we have looked at 2 aspects of Lewis’s life and a sampling of some of the books that derived from it. But C.S.Lewis the scholar and Christian have only sold about, oh, 75 million copies, so where do the rest come from? They come from C.S.Lewis the Novelist.

You already know Lewis loved to read, but what kind of stories were his favorite? According to [citation needed], he loved fair tales and fantasies. It didn’t matter if they were written for children; he still loved them. In his own essay entitled: “Sometimes Fairy Stories Say Best What’s To Be Said,” Lewis said that

I fell in love with the [fairy tale] form itself: its brevity, its severe restraints on description, its flexible traditionalism, its inflexible hostility to all analysis, digression, reflections and ‘gas.’ I was now enamored of it. Its very limitations of vocabulary became an attraction; as the hardness of the stone pleases the sculpture or the difficulty of the sonnet delights the sonneteer.

He goes on: “[As an author myself] I wrote fairy tales because the fairy tale seemed the ideal form for the stuff I had to say” (On Stories, 47). And so we have the Chronicles of Narnia today. Not children’s stories only but stories with a simplicity and clearness of writing that even children can understand. The reason why Narnia is so popular for many adults still, may hinge on what Lewis once said, quote, “It certainly is my opinion that a book worth reading only as a child is not worth reading even then” (On Stories, 48).

Science Fiction is not all that different from fantasy. During the1940s and 50s when Lewis was at the peak of his writing career, Science Fiction was just becoming popular. Lewis contributed to the rise of Sci-fi with a space trilogy. In the first book, Ransom is abducted by an evil scientist who plans to take him to Mars as a gift/sacrifice/offering to the Martians. On landing he escapes but is soon recaptured by the strange natives. They don’t sacrifice him on a bloody alter like he thought, instead he must help them send the evil scientist back to earth. That’s a simplification but I don’t want to give everything away before you’ve read it for yourself.

Review of the preview:

The third and final book in this trilogy, That Hideous Strength, is one of my favorite books. Maybe that’s because it reveals all aspects of C.S.Lewis that we just looked at. C.S.Lewis the Novelist is at his height writing about a scientific conspiracy to control all of England. C.S.Lewis the Christian has his hero wrestle with choosing to resist evil or join it for the sake of power and wealth. His heroine also discovers that helping others is better than always thinking of oneself. Finally, C.S.Lewis the Medieval Scholar supplies the background for the reappearance of the legendary wizard Merlin after a 1000-year sleep.

It’s hard not to like an author who has a little something for everyone. Whether you’re a history buff wanting to empress your history or lit teacher on a test, or you’re looking for the easy to understand answers to the hard questions of life, or you just want to curl up with a good story, try C.S.Lewis. 200 million other people have liked him; you might too.

Who Killed Homer?

"Until the fog of classicism has lifted, the greater classics are invisible.”--C.S.Lewis (28).

Occasionally (translate, once in a great while) I will read a book with a more substantive content than my usual fair of “fluff in fiction.” When this does happen I am often surprised both by the inscrutable, unfathomable content and by how much I enjoy it. The latest instance of this is Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath’s inquiry into Who Killed Homer. To be honest, I didn’t actually read it (that would be impressive!); I listened to it, so it may have gone in one ear and out the other.

If you haven’t heard of Victor Davis Hanson yet--you have now. A good way to meet him is through his blog, Works and Days, that right now is devoted to national politics. That he could be one of the best political commentators as well as one of the best Greek historians and educators is strong testimony to his intellect.

Who Killed Homer seeks to do three primary things: (1.) discover why the Iliad and Odyssey and other Greek and Latin classics are so little studied, (2.) Shame classics professors into actually teaching their students instead of seeking tenure and grants to spend on “esoteric” research projects, and (3.) Warn that Western culture will be lost if we forget “the Greek way of thinking.”

A number of factors have contributed to “the demise of classical education” (that happens to be part of the subtitle). A proliferation of degrees in fields such as “gender studies,” psychology, and so on, have sapped students and resources from classics departments. Students are too lazy to devote their time to learning Latin and Greek when easier courses are available (I don’t blame them, I’m unilingual too). These and other factors, Hanson and Heath argue, have made it so that today most colleges do not even have a classics department and those that do…. Well, this calls for a new paragraph on the second point listed above.

Classics professors often do not teach their students the foundations of Greek language, literature, and history. In their place classes that make the student feel good, or that do not require the teacher to prepare, or, just as bad, classes on esoteric topics are substituted. Hanson and Heath seem to take great relish in lampooning the titles of “esoteric” (seemingly one of Hanson’s favorite words) papers and theses written by less than admired colleagues. “Feminism in Greek Culture” takes precedence over actually teaching about Greek culture and “Homosexuality and Gender Issues in Such and Such an Author” trumps teaching what that author actually wrote. Hanson and Heath feel so strongly about poor teaching quality that they advocate abolishing the tenure system, cutting grants for research projects, and increasing teaching loads across the country.

So far I have been summarizing some pretty specialized topics in Who Killed Homer, those not interested in the decline of education standards over the past few decades and who have no power to change it anyway, may ask the not unimportant question: “what’s in it for me?” Hanson and Heath point out that Western culture is directly descended from the Greeks and Romans. All our most important institutions and ideals—Western culture itself—are from that ancient world. Individual freedom, constitutional government, free speech, you name it, were all patronized and defended by the Greeks. Hanson and Heath claim that never has a country been so influenced by the Greeks and yet (increasingly) so ignorant of them. They warn that if “the Greek way of thinking” is lost, Western culture, as we know it, will disappear. So there’s your answer, if you live in America or any country that still claims to be part of the ideological “West.”

The concluding half of Who Killed Homer’s subtitle is: The Recovery of Greek Wisdom. Hanson and Heath argue that “the Greek way of thinking” must be encouraged through teaching people the basics of Classical history and thought. More than just a few musty old professors and irritatingly brilliant students need to know about the principles of Greek culture to be able to recover its wisdom. Every citizen of the Polis should “think like a Greek.”

For a sample chapter modified into an essay by the authors click here.

C.S.Lewis, English Literature in the 16th Century, Oxford Univ. Press, 1954.

The Man Born To Be King

“You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born.” –John 18:37

Dorothy L. Sayers has an impressive variety of books under her name. Detective stories, translations of medieval writings, essays and commentaries on literature, and last, but not least, plays. I have had the opportunity to get a brief sampling of each of these with the exception of her dramas. That is, until I recently read her series of plays under the title: The Man Born To Be King. These plays chronicle the life of Christ with sometimes free, but never irreverent or improbable, additions of suppositional history and dialogue.

Call it coincidence if you will, but I just happened to start reading in Matthew the week I began this book and, due to slow reading and many distractions, was still reading it all the way through Mark, Luke, and John. This turned out to be a good thing because, like most things that get stale and boring after much familiarity, the story of Jesus as contained in the four gospels was starting to get old. Perhaps it’s just me, but it seems that sometimes we start reading and immediately disconnect our brain (or, equally fatal, our heart) and merely process empty words. At the end of a chapter we vaguely remember a string of platitudes and parables heard a hundred times before but don’t really care to recall them to mind or ponder who they were spoken to and why. The narrative of Jesus life hardly stirs our interest or emotions anymore. Even that piercing and heartrending cry uttered from the cross of suffering: “my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” can eventually be read with indifferent and sleepy eyes. The Man Born To Be King, however, lets us experience the life of Christ anew. Like Ben Hur and other historical novels that introduce the sights, sound, and “feel” of a scene, so Sayers adds little details that make the bare facts more lifelike.

Knowing the end of a story can also make us less attentive readers. Sayers combats this by developing Judas’s character so that we don’t know if he will really betray Jesus for some time. He starts off as a good guy like all the other disciples but is slowly gnawed by mistrust of Jesus’ pure motives in the corrupt political landscape of Judea that Sayers envisions. Pilate’s role is also realistically done I thought. Why all the vacillating between having Jesus flogged and evading condemning him on the technicality that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction? Or between allowing Jesus to be crucified but immediately washing his hands of the whole affair? Sayers presents it as a sort of political chess game that Pilate was forced to play with the High Priest. Although Pilate was able to put the Jews in check with the admission that, “we have not king but Caesar,” he was checkmated by his own move when the Jews countered by charging: “if you let this man go you are no friend of Caesar. Anyone who claims to be a king opposes Caesar.”

To sum things up, The Man Born to be King retells the gospel story with a little suppositional history and plot development that make the real history more interesting for those that both have or have not heard it before. Originally, the goal of these plays on the life of Christ were to introduce people to Jesus apart from “religion” and the language of the King James Bible. The mid 20th century British language and employment of the hardly popular drama form will probably turn most people today off just like the King James Language often still does, but we can hope it was useful to B.B.C. radio audiences in the 1940’s. And, even now, for a few like me to once again follow in the dusty footsteps of the Carpenter from Nazareth who is the Man born to be King.

The Greeks Seek After Wisdom; Americans Seek After...What?

Although I was generally unfavorable impressed with the novel Lucky Jim, something did catch my attention because it addresses education and choosing a profession, two things that I (and hopefully some other college students) have given passing thought to. Kingsley Amis, a British novelist and acquaintance of C.S.Lewis, has his protagonist, Dixon, receive a question from a colleague about why he got a job teaching medieval history. Dixon candidly answers:

the reason I'm a medievalist, as you call it, is that the medieval papers were a soft option in the Leicester course so I specialized in them. Then when I applied for the job here I naturally made a big point of that because it looked better to seem interested in something specific. It's why I got the job instead of that clever boy from Oxford... Haven't you noticed how we all specialize in what we hate most? (35).

I wonder how many students today major in psychology or cultural studies and so on, for the same reason. Of course, for them the chance of getting a job in such a field is slim, even if they wanted one. If it is not for the disinterested love of learning and it is not for a job in the particular major they choose, what is it people go to college for? The Greeks sought after knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone or to make themselves better, more virtuous citizens. In later times, more pragmatic people have wanted knowledge of certain skills and information to better them in their career. Many in the halls of learning today do not seem to fall into either class, in fact, they just seem to have fallen into class out of the sky. I wonder how many people with regard to learning say in unison with Dixon: "you don't think I take all that stuff seriously, do you?" (34).

Confession: To be honest, I don't really know why I'm in class either. Isn't it easy to condemn in others the very faults we ourselves have?

Amis, Kingsley. Lucky Jim. The Viking Press, 28th. printing 1973

If Your Day's Too Bright, Read the Paper

I was reading letters to the editor in the local paper (something I do about once a week to remind myself how depressing things are "out there") and came across one in Tuesday's Record Searchlight that astonished me. No, it was not that the fellow was defending homosexuality, but that he rejected the idea of any objective or knowable truth. He stated that "my truth is my truth, and your truth is your truth." I would like to know if this statement is universally true or is it just his opinion? If it is always true for everyone then we just stumbled upon the living corpse of an absolute truth that he believed was dead. If, after all, it is just "your truth" then I see no reason to believe it and will continue to believe "my truth," that, indeed, there are universal certainties in the physical and moral order. If this were a letter to the editor I would conclude with:
Yours truly,
Brian

13th. Century Literature: Part II

I was going to begin with a grand paean in praise of The Nibelungenlied, extolling it as the great epic of German legendary history. But that sort of thing is boring to most people including myself. In fact, the very name of The Nibelungenlied, if it sparks any recognition at all, is not likely to kindle a flame of interest. Stories with Homeric battles, lengthy and improbable speeches, all written in (or translated into) archaic language, are not likely to rivet the attention of most people. So instead I’ll briefly describe some of the characters.

Though my knowledge of ancient and medieval literature is limited, it seems to me that Sigfried, Kriemhild and others are delineated with a clearness and realism lacking in most old texts. A notable exception is Hagen, but of him later. First, who is Sigfried? Before this story opens in the mythical past of Germanic Europe he was reputed to have won a fabulous treasure by killing a dragon. Those who have read The Hobbit or the end of Beowulf will have a good grasp on this dragon/treasure principle in literature. Unlike Beowulf, who is slain, Sigfried survives and rubs the blood of the dragon all over his skin. Except for a small spot on his back. If you reach one arm over your shoulder and twist the other behind your back you will notice that (besides being uncomfortable and looking stupid) it is extremely difficult to make your hands touch somewhere between your shoulder blades. This is Sigfried’s Achilles Heel; the one spot not made invulnerable by virtue of the dragon’s blood. It is though this, and the cunning of Hagen, that Sigfried is treacherously murdered.

From the beginning his death is hinted at. It is really the focus of the whole story. It seems odd that the hero of a story should die halfway through the book, but if Sigfried had not died early on in the story there would be no Nibelungenlied; his death sets into motion a host of other evils: lies, greed, revenge, and lastly, war. Sigfried's death is a tragedy but it is not the last, nor even, I think, the greatest, tragedy in this story.

Who is most grieved over the death of Sigfried? Who but his wife, the lovely Kriemhild. And good reason she has to be grieved; not only over Sigfried, but also over the way her kinsmen and Hagen treat her after his death. How right it is to sympathize with Kriemhild yet how wrong to support her later actions. To understand this claim will require explaining the further events of the story. Kriemhild eventually remarries a distant king; however, rather than causing her to forget Sigfried, this only elevates her into a position powerful enough to avenge his death. It takes awhile, but finally she lures Hagen and her kinsmen to her new husband’s realm with pretended overtures of friendliness. Her intention is to start a conflict on some pretext and slaughter them. Her kinsmen and Hagen seem almost equally inclined to belligerence and demonstrate it by their disrespect and arrogance. It is, therefore, almost irrelevant who struck the first blow.

The men of Hagen and Günther (Kriemhild’s brother) easily get the upper hand in the first bout. They barricade themselves into the main hall and fight off every assault launched against them. All day they fight till Kriemhild, with the logic (and cruelty) of a woman, orders the hall burnt down. Somehow a few of them survive the flames and fight on the next day amid the charred rubble. At this point the fighting reaches Hollywood quality but it tops Hollywood (as most books do) by searching out what drives good and bad men to war. Rudiger and Dietrich, unwilling warriors, are perhaps the most human and the most heroic, and therefore the best, characters in the story apart from Sigfried himself. How and why they fight is both tragic and glorious, but mostly tragic. Even Dietrich’s victory over Hagen is no cause for joy.

So who is the hero in this tale? All through the book I was looking for a hero (after Sigfried died anyway). While there are many noble and heroic characters scattered throughout, the main conflict centers between Kriemhild and Hagen. Hagen, as the murderer of Sigfried, was obviously out, but the bloodthirsty revenge of Kriemhild went beyond simply a desire for justice as well. In the end I did not know what to think. I tinkered with the idea that this was a postmodern book (written, of course, around 1200 A.D) with no good guy/bad guy distinctions. Yet while no one was right, it does not follow postmodern epistemology that no one was wrong. Both were wrong. There may be different degrees of wrongness, but the central fact remains: both Hagen and Kriemhild were wrong. The consequence of their actions was the slaughter and decimation of entire Kingdoms.

13th. Century Literature: Part I

Among the small backlog of unreviewed books on my desk, The Mabinogion is probably most obscure. This collection of ancient Welsh tales and Arthurian legends was written down around the 13th century but is, like Beowulf and many other early European manuscripts, derived from a much older source, probably oral. The authors or compilers (most likely many) are likewise veiled in obscurity. Mabinogi are the traditional stories of the ancient Celtic people that all bards and most people would have known; something like what the legends of Johnny Appleseed and George Washington chopping down the cherry tree are to Americans.

The nearest definition I can give of these stories as a whole would be fantasy. About half of them in some way mention Arthur or are versions of the better-known Arthurian canon. Having just read Chretien De Troyes a few months ago helped in navigating the maze of outlandish adventurers. Unfortunately, names in my edition are translated with what is evidently a near approximation to their Gaelic originals so even a comparatively easy to recognize name like Guinever is spelled Gwenhwyvar. Among the many long lists of names are ones like: “Adaon the son of Taliesin, Llary the son of Kasnar Wledig, Fflewddur Fflam, and Greidant Galldovydd, Gilbert the son of Kadgyffro, Menw the son of Teirgwaedd,” and so on, and on, and on.

My high expectations were tolerably met in the first story or “branch” of The Mabinogion that recounts the tale of Pwyll, prince of Dyved who exchanges kingdoms for one year with another king he meets while hunting. As I continued reading, though, my interest waned. Long lists of funny names (spanning multiple pages Old Testament style), events that lacked any verisimilitude, and flat undeveloped characters that all appeared the same, must have been what did it for me. I am, however, being unfair to a book from the Middle Ages. Of course it is not going to compare to a novel by Dickens or Austen. But it did little good to tell myself this while drifting into a doze.