LEWIS, CLIVE STAPLES

Literary historian, Christian apologist, scholar, critic, writer of science fiction and children's books; b. Belfast, Ireland, Nov. 29, 1898; d. the Kilns, Headington, England, Nov. 22, 1963. His father was Albert James Lewis, a solicitor; his mother Florence Augusta Hamilton. They had two sons, Warren and Clive, who at an early age changed his name to "Jack." Before he was 10 his mother died of cancer, and the two boys were on their own, being somewhat estranged from their father. In 1917 Lewis prepared for entrance into Oxford University but World War I found him commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry. He arrived at the front line trenches on his 19th birthday Nov. 29, 1917, soon afterwards seeing service at Fampoux and Monchy, and was wounded at Mt. Bemechon, near Lillers, in April 1918.

He returned to Oxford in January 1919 and on June 25, 1925, was elected to official fellowship in Magdalen College as tutor in English Language and Literature. He remained at Oxford until 1954. Passed over for the Merton Chair of English Literature in 1947 and defeated in 1951 for the Professorship of Poetry, he finally accepted in 1954 the Professorship of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College in Cambridge. Soon after, Oxford awarded him an honorary fellowship.

In 1956 Lewis married Joy Gresham Davidman, who died in 1960 of bone cancer. Lewis described this most difficult experience in A Grief Observed (1961).

Prior to 1929 Lewis had considered himself an atheist or at least an agnostic, and had published two books of poetry in that vein, but his conversion to theism in 1929 and to Christianity in 1931 resulted in his first book on apologetics: The Pilgrim's Regress (1933). Using John Bunyan's classic as a model, Lewis enucleated one of his major themes: the idea of longing, disquietude, yearning, Sehnsucht, for the eternal which no earthly thing can satisfy since our hearts are restless for the Eternal. Following Saint augustine, the pseudo-dionysius, and Pascal, Lewis asserts that earthly pleasures, being unsatisfactory, can only point to an everlasting heavenly pleasure. This theme is repeated in the Chronicles of Narnia (1950–56), a series of children's books treating traditional topics but translating them into an imaginary kingdom of people and animals. Aslan, the lion and king of beasts, represents a Christ figure.

Lewis's two most popular works are The Screwtape Letters (1942), a series of letters from the devil to his undersecretary in hell, Wormwood, on how to win a Christian from the fold, and Mere Christianity (1952), a summation of talks from the British Broadcasting Series that made Lewis famous during World War II.

Elsewhere, Lewis deals with the imperatives of the moral law, and in The Abolition of Man (1943) asserts that ethical commands (the Tao) are not merely written in the heart, but into the very structure of the universe itself. The Great Divorce (1945) records a series of conversations between various visitors from hell who are allowed to make an excursion to heaven, and for the most part decide not to remain there. The Problem of Pain (1940) contains some interesting analyses of evolution, primitive societies, animal pain, and the existence of hell. Various kinds of love (The Four Loves 1960), prayer (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer 1964), insights into the Psalms (Reflections on the Psalms 1958), and theological questions on sin and redemption arising on other planets not yet or about to be tempted (Out of the Silent Planet 1938; Perelandra 1943; and That Hideous Strength 1945), are just a few of the many topics which Lewis dealt with. Some consider his best work to be the novel Till We Have Faces (1956), a story of the soul based on the Greek legend of Psyche.

Lewis is widely remembered not so much for his scholarly expertise in medieval and Renaissance English literature (brilliantly demonstrated in the Oxford History of English Literature 1966), but for his popular writings in defense of traditional Christianity, and in this he is not infrequently compared to G. K. chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Quite orthodox in content but very original in style it is their direct "ad hominem" approach which has helped to make his books so lasting in their appeal.

Bibliography: h. carpenter, The Inklings (London 1978). m.j. christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture (Waco, Tex. 1979). j. r. christopher and j. k. ostling, An Annotated Checklist of Writings About Him and His Works (Kent, Ohio 1974). j. t. como, ed., C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and other Reminiscences (New York 1979). c. derrick, C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome (San Francisco 1981). w. griffin, Clive Staples Lewis: A Dramatic Life (San Francisco 1986). w. hooper, Past Watchful Dragons: The Narnian Chronicles of C. S. Lewis (New York 1979). c. c. kilby, The Christian World of C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1964). g. meilaender, The Taste for the Other. The Social and Ethical Thought of C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1978). r. l. purtill, C. S. Lewis' Case for the Christian Faith (New York 1981). c. walsh, C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics (New York 1949); The Literary Legacy of C. S. Lewis (New York 1979). w. l. white, The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis (Nashville 1969). j. r. willis, Pleasures Forevermore. The Theology of C. S. Lewis (Chicago 1983).

[j. r. willis]