Events

Past Events

Sarah Waters, "Exploring C.S. Lewis and Shakespeare"

Fri, March 21, 2025 3:30pm
Ruane Center for the Humanities
Room 105

“I am driven to literary examples because you, the reader, and I, do not live in the same neighbourhood” – so declares Lewis in his discussion of Affection in The Four Loves. Only a phrase before, he had referenced a Shakespeare play and its titular character. As this talk will show, Lewis frequently turns to Shakespeare as a frame of reference, in significant ways. Outlining some key areas of Lewis’s Shakespeare scholarship, this talk will explore the different ways Lewis engaged with Shakespeare in his wider writings, especially his apologetics, as we uncover some of the deeply personal reasons why Shakespeare becomes a critical touchstone and a key player in Lewis’s own story.

Junius Johnson, "Fairies, Angels, and the Human Heart: Nature and Supernature in Conversation"

Fri, October 4, 2024 3:30pm
Ruane Center for the Humanities
Room 105

Writers like C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, and J.R.R. Tolkien drew upon the fairy tradition in folklore to discuss the dynamics of Christian salvation. At first glance, this is quite strange: historically, Christianity worked to suppress fairy folklore, which it considered superstitious at best, and vestigial paganism at worst. And yet any who have drank at the well of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings knows that these writers were on to something. This talk will explore the nature of fairies and angels, as well as the dynamics of the human heart, and demonstrate that it is just possible that Fairyland is indeed a sort of neighboring kingdom or back door into the Christian vision of blessedness.

Holly Ordway, “Faith, Friendship, and Fantasy: JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis’s Mutual Influence’”

Fri, March 22, 2024 3:30pm
Ruane Center for the Humanities
Room 105

Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings and his other Middle-earth writings are internationally popular, loved by millions who do not share his religious beliefs. Yet Tolkien declared, "I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories)." How was Tolkien's faith related to his fiction? We will explore this question biographically, with special attention to his deep friendship with C.S. Lewis -- including the question of whether Narnia would have existed without Middle-earth.

Sarah O'Dell, "R.E. Havard: What C.S. Lewis’s Physician Teaches us about the Medical Imagination"

Fri, September 29, 2023 3:30pm
Ruane Center for the Humanities
Room 105

Often called the “medical Inkling,” R.E. Havard was a Catholic writer, physician, and one of C.S. Lewis’s closest friends. This lecture explores the life and writings of this often-overlooked literary doctor, considering not only his profound influence on C.S. Lewis, but also revealing the riches of his medical imagination. In making room for the soul, Havard’s holistic vision of health both articulates a Christian response to mental illness, as well as recognizes the healing power of literature and the arts.

Carol Zaleski, “C. S. Lewis’s Divine Comedy: The Landscape of the Afterlife and the Substance of Christian Hope"

Fri, February 17, 2023 3:00pm
Ruane Center for the Humanities
Room 105

In the extraordinary course of his life as a literary historian, fantasy fiction writer, philosopher, poet, social satirist, memoirist, and apologist, C. S. Lewis introduced multitudes to the mysteries and rational architecture of Christian faith. This lecture will explore the particular service Lewis performed for Christian eschatology. Though averse to idle curiosity about the afterlife, Lewis created a Divine Comedy of his own, illuminating our fading picture of heaven, hell, purgatory, and end times, and providing sound reasons for the renewal of Christian hope.

Michael Ward, “The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God: C. S. Lewis, Narnia, and Medieval Cosmology”

Wed, January 25, 2023 3:30pm
Ruane Center for the Humanities
Room 105

C.S. Lewis disclosed that his best-known works, the seven Chronicles of Narnia, were “about Christ”. But how so? Michael Ward shows that, far from being simple allegories, the Chronicles are carefully constructed out of the imagery of the seven planets of the medieval cosmos, which Lewis described as “spiritual symbols of permanent value.”