Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal: Volume 10, 2016

By Wipf and Stock

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal, established by the Arizona C. S. Lewis Society in 2007, is the only peer-reviewed journal devoted to the study of C. S. Lewis and his writings published anywhere in the world. It exists to promote literary, theological, historical, biographical, philosophical, bibliographical and cultural interest (broadly defined) in Lewis and his writings. The journal includes articles, review essays, book reviews, film reviews and play reviews, bibliographical material, poetry, interviews, editorials, and announcements of Lewis-related conferences, events and publications. Its readership is aimed at academic scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, as well as learned non-scholars and Lewis enthusiasts. At this time, Sehnsucht is published once a year.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Dec 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781498276832

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Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

Table of Contents

Title Page

Contributors

General Editor’s Note

Articles

The Exact Programme a Particular Country Wishes to Have: C. S. Lewis’ Literary Broadcast for Iceland

Lost Letters of Lewis at the Lambeth Palace Library

Saving the Appearances? C. S. Lewis’ Critique of Scientific Knowledge

C. S. Lewis and the Occult Temptation

Happily Ever After for the Twenty-First Century? Sex, Love, and Human Identity in C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia

Conflict, Forgiveness, and the Healing of Harms in C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia

Review Essays

Memorialized in Poet’s Corner

New Stages in the Study of Lewis’ Poetry

A Debt to Dante

Poetry

The Sign of the Broken Sword after G.K. Chesterton

Tintern Abby

Or What’s a Heaven For?

Winter Flowering on Chowning Place

Reviews

Book Reviews

Miscellaneous

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal Submission Guidelines

Contributors

Gregory Anderson (Ph.D., University of Minnesota) is the Senior Pastor of Union Church Hong Kong. He has lectured on C. S. Lewis in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Greg has written a number of journal articles and book chapters with a focus on Lewis as a communicator.

Suzanne Bray (Ph.D., Université Charles de Gaulle, Lille III, France) is Professor of British Literature and Civilization at Lille Catholic University in the north of France. She has published extensively in English and French on several British Christian writers including C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Charles Williams, and G.K. Chesterton. Her book about the reasons for Lewis’s success as an apologist, C.S. Lewis: la vocation d’un best-seller, was published by Imago in 2008.

Grayson Carter (D.Phil., University of Oxford) is Associate Professor of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, where he has taught since 2002. Prior to that, he served as Chaplain and Tutor for Theology at Brasenose College, Oxford, and taught in the Department of Religion at Methodist University in North Carolina. His publications include Anglican Evangelicals: Protestant Secessions from the Via Media, c. 1800-1850 (OUP, 2001, 2015), and Light amid Darkness: Memoirs of Daphne Randall (Wipf and Stock, 2015). He served as general editor of Sehnsucht from 2006 until 2014.

Monika B. Hilder (Ph.D., Simon Fraser University) is Professor of English at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia, and co-founder and co-director of the Inklings Institute of Canada. She is the author of a three-volume study of C.S. Lewis: The Feminine Ethos in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia (2012); The Gender Dance: Ironic Subversion in C. S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy (2013); Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C. S. Lewis and Gender (2013). She has also published on George MacDonald, L. M. Montgomery, and Madeleine L’Engle, as well as short fiction, drama, and poetry.

Charles A. Huttar (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is Professor of Eng-lish Emeritus at Hope College. He has published extensively on Lewis, Williams, Tolkien, and Barfield (as well as a variety of other subjects, especially in medieval and early modern literature and art). He is the editor of Imagination and the Spirit (1971) and coeditor of Word and Story in C. S. Lewis (1991, 2007) and The Rhetoric of Vision: Essays on Charles Williams (1996). Over the past thirty years he has dealt with the poetry of C. S. Lewis in several articles.

Thomas Garrett Isham, (B.A., Michigan State University) is a career journalist and independent scholar who is a native of lower Michigan. A licensed lay preacher in the Diocese of Western Michigan, he is a conservative Episcopalian active in a variety of ministries. His research focuses on the interactions of spirit and soul, techniques of interior knowledge, and man’s microcosmic role in traditional cosmology. He is the author of six books, including Rock of Ages: Augustus Toplady, the Little-Known Man Behind the Well-Known Hymn (2016), The Orthodox Enneagram (2013), A Born Again Episcopalian: The Evangelical Witness of Charles Pettit McIlvaine (2011), and A Christian Spiritual Psychology: The Four Temperaments of Jacob Boehme (2006). A book on Joseph de Maistre and the birth of tradition is forthcoming.

Louis Markos (Ph.D., University of Michigan) is Professor in English and Scholar in Residence at Houston Baptist University, and holds the Robert H. Ray Chair in Humanities. He is the author of thirteen books, including On the Shoulders of Hobbits: The Road to Virtue with Tolkien and Lewis (2012), Heaven and Hell: Vision of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition (2013), From A to Z to Narnia with C. S. Lewis (2015), and The Dreaming Stone (2015), a children’s novel in which his children become part of Greek mythology and learn that Christ is the myth that became fact.

Jeffrey A. Misener (M.A., Briercrest Seminary) serves in the Archibald Library at Briercrest College and Seminary in Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada. He is a worship leader and songwriter, and his research interests include themes of forgiveness and reconciliation and spiritual warfare. His first published article appears in this issue of Sehnsucht.

Thomas Storck (M.A., St. John’s College, Santa Fe) is the author of The Catholic Milieu (1987), Foundations of a Catholic Political Order (1998), Christendom and the West (1999), and From Christendom to Americanism and Beyond (2015). He has written widely for periodicals and websites in North America and Europe, and is a member of the editorial board of The Chesterton Review and a contributing editor of The Distributist Review.

General Editor’s Note

After the formatting of Sehnsucht Volume 9 (2015) had been completed, and as it was being sent out for printing, we experienced two great losses to our Editorial Body. While traveling with his wife on October 28th, Associate Editor Bruce L. Edwards passed away suddenly. As I began to share that sad news with others, our Poetry Editor, Brett Foster, wrote back on November 3rd to say, I hate to follow up your note of heaviness with a further tough update of my own, but I continue not to do well this fall. Brett died six days later. Both men are remembered with tributes in the pages that follow. They will be deeply missed for their scholarship as well as their friendship.

Stepping into the void left by these losses are our new Associate Editors, Joel Heck and Louis Markos, and our new Poetry Editor, Scott Cairns. Joel and Louis are both well-known figures among the community of C. S. Lewis scholars (of which I know something) and Scott is well-regarded among the community of active poets (of which I know very little). There have been additional changes with Associate Editor Diana Pavlac Glyer leaving in order to focus on emerging opportunities and Reviews Editor Sørina Higgins leaving to begin a doctoral program in Texas. Crystal Hurd has enthusiastically assumed the role of our new Review Editor with Lydia Newell and Steven Reed coming on board to revise and relaunch the journal’s website. William Gentrup has kindly agreed to expand his crucial role in preparing the journal for publication. If anything, his new title of Assistant Editor understates the value of his various contributions.

Thanks are also expressed for the wisdom of our continuing Associate Editors, James P. Helfers and Arend Smilde, the diligence of our continuing Assistant Editors, Megan Novello and Christopher Ludwig, and the faithfulness of Victoria Carr in continuing to handle subscriptions and fulfillment for the journal’s readers.

The first two essays in Volume 10 are each commissioned articles of significance to the field of Lewis studies and bear some special mention. Suzanne Bray’s essay provides the proper historical context for the newly rediscovered recording C. S. Lewis made for Iceland. It is hoped her efforts here may eventually lead to the publication of this new material. Then Greg Anderson introduces for us three previously unpublished letters from Lewis to notable Anglican clergy. The letters themselves appear here by kind permission of the C. S. Lewis Company and Lambeth Palace Library. Lewis, the mere Christian, also lived as an active lay member of the Church of England, and this part of his story is certainly worthy of greater examination in the future.

Bruce R. Johnson

October 2016

St. Crispin’s Day

In Memory:

Bruce L. Edwards, Jr.

(1952-2015)

Crystal Hurd

When word of Bruce Edwards’ sudden passing reached me in late October 2015, I had just landed in Texas to speak at the C. S. Lewis Foundation’s annual retreat in Navasota. Two weeks earlier, William O’Flaherty and I had suggested that Bruce drop by the retreat center during his own planned trip to Texas. Bruce declined, but in a friendly reply said, Have a safe trip. I know while I am in Houston I will feel the Force (of you and Crystal) and signed it, And all the ships at sea. Little did we know how soon Bruce, like Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, would confidently sail his own coracle into Aslan’s Country.

Bruce L. Edwards, Jr., was Professor Emeritus of English and Africana Studies, and former Associate Vice President of Online Programs and E-learning Services, at Bowling Green State University. In addition to his long and successful career as a college professor and administrator, Bruce also served as a Fulbright Fellow in Kenya as well as a Bradley Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D. C., the S. W. Brooks Memorial Professor of Literature at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, a C. S. Lewis Foundation Fellow at The Kilns, and as an Associate Editor of this journal. Bruce’s extraordinary breadth of knowledge is apparent throughout his many published works, including the four-volume set that he edited, C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy (2007). For that comprehensive study, he succeeded in drawing together many of the world’s leading Lewis scholars.

Aside from his four-volume opus, Bruce also published A Rhetoric of Reading: C. S. Lewis’s Defense of Western Literacy (1986) and The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer (1988). It was in the preface of this latter work that Owen Barfield gave the often-quoted line, Somehow what Lewis thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything.1 Bruce would go on to write Not a Tame Lion (2005) and Further Up and Further In: Understanding C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2008), as well the college textbooks Roughdrafts (1987), Processing Words (1988), and Searching for Great Ideas (1989, 1992).

Bruce had an uncanny ability to concisely analyze ambiguous and well-debated passages from Lewis’ work. He understood the responsibilities of scholarship, and often brought to task work presented in web articles posted by pundits not scholars. He was quick to call out the refuse floating through cyberspace, including a plethora of misattributed quotes and philosophical discrepancies associated with Lewis’ works. He was deeply concerned with the future of Lewis scholarship, worried that the loudest voice, not the most knowledgeable, could quickly gain a following. This, he feared, would have dangerous consequences. Bruce did not wish to police the internet, but rather to protect the integrity and true spirit of Lewis as technology blossomed in the new century. He recorded podcasts and wrote insightful posts that remain on social media and on his website The C. S. Lewis Review.

Most importantly, Bruce was a family man. He was a diligent and loving husband to his wife of forty-two years, Joan. He was also the proud father of four exceptionally talented children. He even had a starring role as Adrian Belmont in his sons’ award-winning film Detective Detective Detective. His son Justin Edwards produced and directed the film, and co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Michael Ian, who also wrote the film’s soundtrack. Detective Detective Detective was edited by Bruce’s daughter-in-law Juliette Edwards. The film was shot on location in Alaska, using Bruce’s post-retirement home as the setting. Bruce was incredibly proud of his family and their many accomplishments. He insisted that his greatest achievement was being a good husband and good father to his children.

Joan called him a cheerleader, and friends and colleagues soon learned how encouraging he could be. My first encounter with Bruce occurred on the social media site Twitter in 2011. At that time, I was serendipitously scheduled to propose my dissertation topic, Transformational Leadership in the Life and Works of C. S. Lewis, on Lewis’ birthday (November 29th). When Bruce asked his Twitter audience what we were doing to celebrate Jack’s birthday, I responded that I had successfully proposed my dissertation. Bruce immediately offered his congratulations. Eventually, I asked Bruce to complete an email interview to contribute to my research, a request he answered enthusiastically by stating, I was hoping you would ask me! Thus began a long and enriching exchange that continues to shape my development as a scholar and writer. Indeed, his influence has impacted writers over the last four decades. He will be remembered as a true friend who was always eager to offer assistance or a kind word to others.

The death of Bruce Edwards leaves a great vacancy both in Lewis scholarship and in the hearts of those who knew him. I conclude by using Bruce’s own words to me regarding Lewis’ humble approach to leadership:

How has Lewis helped me in developing the traits I have attributed to him? The more Lewis I read, the more I see them exemplified. The more I know of Lewis’s life and practice, the more I see a clearly defined set of priorities and purposes. My sly and compelling mentor has subtly taught me not to trust my instincts, but rather to surrender them: better to reign in heaven than to serve myself in Hell, the land of incessant autobiography. My allegiance, he led me to see, could only be to the Incarnate Miracle Maker who was not just the Author of me, but of Everything. I had to trade in my mess of pottage (doctrinal sureties and hermeneutical certainties) for a better blessing: the privilege of knowing Him, the Lord Christ, a secure knowledge that makes all other so-called knowledge mere nonsense.

Lewis’s life was, by all accounts, thoroughly integrated, his leadership inseparable from his daily discipleship before God, a man whose presuppositions and convictions about life, faith, and reality, were centered in God and manifested themselves in all that he attempted. This is the life put before me that I attempt to follow. He is the leader I would aspire to be, his own life surrendered to Christ."2

Requiescat in pace.

In Memory:

Brett C. Foster

(1973-2015)

Bruce R. Johnson

He is a youthful (of course, photographs do not lie!) Assistant Professor of English at Wheaton College. . . . We anticipate that Brett will help inspire the composition of many new poetic works related to Lewis and his writings." With those words, Brett Foster was introduced to the readers of Sehnsucht as our inaugural Poetry Editor in 2010. He had inspired a dozen other poets to make contributions to our pages by the time I had assumed the role of General Editor. So my phone call with him to discuss our upcoming Volume 9 (2015) was full of promise. Brett laid out his editorial plans for that year, a fresh crop of poetry by new contributors. It was only afterwards that he shared his unexpected news: colon cancer.

Brett Foster was a scholar of Renaissance literature, as well as a poet, and was Associate Professor of English at Wheaton College, Illinois. He had earned bachelor degrees in English and Journalism at the University of Missouri, and a master’s degree in English at Boston University, before becoming a Wallace Stegner Fellow for two years at Stanford University. A Yale University Ph.D. in English would follow. His literary output was impressive. He authored two books of poetry, The Garbage Eater (2011) and Fall Run Road (2012), as well as co-writing a book on literary Rome (2005). He edited various volumes on Shakespeare for a reference series: Shakespeare’s Life (2012), Shakespeare Through the Ages: The Sonnets (2009), and Shakespeare Through the Ages: Hamlet (2008). He produced translations, articles, literary essays, and reviews for various publications. Additionally, his individual poems have appeared in such journals as Anglican Theological Review, Books & Culture, Bostonia, The Christian Century, Harvard Review, Saint Katherine Review, and Yale Review as well as in the anthologies And What Rough Beast: Poems at the End of the Century (1999), American Religious Poems (2006), Best New Poets (2007), Imago Dei (2012), Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry (2013), The Gulf Stream: Poems of the Gulf Coast (2013), and St. Peter’s B-List: Contemporary Poems Inspired by the Saints (2014).

He met the love of his life, Anise, in college. Together, they were blessed with two beloved children, Avery and Gus. It was wonderful. It was all too brief.

Last year, Brett had what he called a more complicated than expected summer which included a trip to Ireland, a brief hospitalization in Limerick, and a return home earlier than expected. On that occasion, he ruefully composed his Limerick from Limerick Regional Hospital. (What poet could resist the opportunity?) However, lines from another of his poems, Tongue Is the Pen, are what linger in my mind. It begins,

Isaiah 43

I am making all things new! Or am trying to,being so surprised to be one of those guys who may be dying early.

The prophet speaks in chapter 43 of God making a new way in the wilderness for his people, and gives the promise from God that, When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. In other words, after the surprise, the promise remains. So it was with Brett, so may it be with us all.

1 Bruce L. Edwards, ed., The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Writer, and Imaginative Writer (Bowling Green, 1988), 2.

2 Crystal Hurd, Transformational Leadership in the Life and Works of C.S. Lewis (Johnson City, 2012), 151.

Articles

The Exact Programme a Particular Country Wishes to Have1:

C. S. Lewis’ Literary Broadcast for Iceland

Suzanne Bray

In December 2015, Harry Lee Poe created somewhat of a sensation by revealing that he had found, on eBay, a Joint Broadcasting Committee 78 rpm record with two out of four parts of a previously unknown talk given by C. S. Lewis to the people of Iceland during the Second World War, entitled The Norse Spirit in English Literature. 2 At the beginning of the talk Lewis states that he [does] not know why he ha[s] been asked to address the people of Iceland and Harry Lee Poe admits that how Lewis came to be recruited and by whom remains a secret. 3 However, some information about the talk and its historical context is available, and this article intends to provide a few elements of the background to Lewis’ recording.

By the summer of 1938, it was becoming obvious to the British authorities both that a second world war was probably inevitable and that Britain was not ready to fight. This was not only true from a military point of view but also in the area of propaganda. As Philip M. Taylor has pointed out, even Adolf Hitler reminded people that propaganda played an essential role in the Allied victory in the First World War by writing in Mein Kampf that the German army had not been defeated on the field of battle, but had lost the war due to the disintegration of morale from within, a process which had been brilliantly exploited by British propaganda.4 However, not only was broadcasting directly into Germany forbidden by the 1936 International Broadcasting Convention, but, as future Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin had declared to Parliament in 1918, propaganda was not a word that has a pleasant sound in English ears,5 and most English people found the concept distasteful, including the governors of the BBC. For this reason, when Major Lawrence Douglas Grand (known as Major Douglas) from Section D of MI6 was ordered in the summer of