A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
|
|||
|
Date
and Place of birth: |
|||
|
Life and Works: C. S. Lewis. English critic, scholar, and novelist. Clive Staples Lewis, Jack to his friends, was born in Belfast on 29 November 1898, to Albert James Lewis (1863-1929) and Flora Augusta Hamilton Lewis (1862-1908). His brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis had been born on June 16, 1895. His mother, a promising mathematician, died when he was nine years old. Lewis had been very close to his mother, who autorbusght him to love books and encouraged him to study French and Latin. While living in Belfast he attended Campbell College in the east of the city. When Lewis' mother died in 1908, he was sent to a number of different schools in England. Around 1913, he abandoned his childhood Christian faith. Lewis had a passion for "dressed animals" as a boy, falling in love with Beatrix Potter's stories and often writing and illustrating his own animal stories. He and his brother, Warnie, together created the world of "Boxen", which was inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read, and as his father’s house was filled with books, he felt that finding a book he hadn’t read was as easy as finding a blade of grass. As adolescents, Lewis and his older brother, Warren, were more at home in the world of ideas and books of the past, than with the material, technological world of the 20th Century. From his youth, Lewis had immersed himself in Irish mythology and literature and expressed an interest in the Irish language. He later developed a particular fondness for W. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats’s use of Ireland’s Celtic heritage in poetry. C. S. Lewis won a classical scholarship to University College, Oxford while World War I was raging. Because he was Irish, Lewis was exempted from conscription, but against his father’s wishes he enlisted in the British Army in 1917. On April 15, 1918, Lewis was wounded on Mount Berenchon during the Battle of Arras and suffered some depression, due in part to missing his Irish home. He recuperated and was returned to duty in October, being assigned to Ludgerhall, Andover, England. He was discharged in December 1918. His former roommate and friend, Paddy Moore, was killed in battle and buried in the field just south of Peronne, France. On resuming his studies, he entered into a curious relationship with a demanding older woman, Janie Moore, following a promise made to her son. Lewis and Moore agreed that if either of them were killed, the other would take care of his family. Despite the financial burden, Lewis set up home with Mrs Moore and her daughter, first in Oxford and later at nearby Headington Quarry. In 1932 they were joined by Lewis' elder brother Warnie, who had retired from the army. Lewis remained in the house after Mrs Moore's death in 1951. C. S. Lewis became a fellow and tutor of Magdalen College at Oxford from 1925 to 1954. He was subsequently the first Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge. Lewis was a prolific writer and a member of the literary discussion society The Inklings with his friends J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. Their Tuesday lunchtime sessions at the "Bird and Baby" pub became a well known part of Oxford social life. Williams died in 1945 and the meetings faded away in 1949. In 1933 C.S. Lewis published his first theological work, The Pilgrim's Regress, a parody of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, that details Lewis's flight from skepticism to faith in a lively allegory. Lewis's first major critical work was Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (1936), which examines the connections between medieval literature and courtly love and established his scholarly reputation. In 1936 he won the Hawthornden prize with this book, but it was The Screwtape Letters (1942) which made him internationally famous, together with broadcast talks, later collected as Mere Christianity (1952). Screwtape is an elderly devil advising his apprentice nephew in methods of mortal temptation, who is having trouble securing the damnation of a young Christian. His Perelandra trilogy, which began with Out of the Silent Planet (1938), was an unprecedented fusion of science fiction, fantasy, and allegory. Between 1939 and 1954, Lewis continued to publish well-received works in criticism and theory, debating E. M. W. Tillyard on the objectivity of poetry in The Personal Heresy, published in 1939, and in that same year publishing a collection of essays under the title Rehabilitations--a work whose title characterized much of Lewis's work, as he attempted to bring the fading critical reputation of authors he revered back into balance. In 1942, his A Preface to Paradise Lost attempted to rehabilitate the reputation of John Milton. Lewis's reputation as a winsome, articulate proponent of Christianity began with the publication of two important theological works: The Problem of Pain, a defense of pain--and the doctrine of hell-- as evidence of an ordered universe, published in 1940. Lewis' predominance as a Christian apologist probably hindered his academic career, but following his monumental English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), a comprehensive overview of 16th-century British poetry and narrative, he was appointed to a new Cambridge chair in Medieval and Renaissance English, though he returned regularly to his Oxford home. A science fiction trilogy was followed by the great success of The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56), seven children's books beginning with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, a tale centered around Aslan the lion, a Christ-figure who creates and rules the supernatural land of Narnia, and the improbable adventures of four undaunted British schoolchildren who stumble into Narnia through a clothes closet. The Chronicles of Narnia borrow from Greek, Roman, and Celtic mythology as well as traditional English and Irish fairy tales and contain many strong Christian messages. Although raised as a Christian, Lewis was an agnostic for much of his youth. When he later wrote an autobiographical work, an account of his adult reconversion to Christianity, under the title Surprised by Joy (1955), he said that he had been "very angry with God for not existing." This book was also a bestseller. Lewis's own favorite fictional work, Till We Have Faces, his last imaginative work, published in 1956, is a retelling of the Cupid/Psyche myth, but has never achieved the critical recognition he hoped it would. In 1956 C. S. Lewis married an American divorcee, Joy Davidman, to enable her to avoid extradition. This curious relationship brought unexpected happiness, but his wife died of bone cancer in 1960. Lewis's notes from this period was published under the title A grief observed (1961) The relationship was the subject of the film Shadowlands (1994), directed by William Nicholson and starring Debra Winger and Anthony Hopkins. Lewis died on November 22, 1963, at the Oxford home he shared with his brother, Warren. He is buried in the Headington Quarry Churchyard, Oxford, England. |
|
||
|
Selected works: Nonfiction:
Bibliography:
|
|||
|
|||
Descargue aquí nuestros buscadores de libros