Simona Catrinel Avarvarei, Nicoleta Rodica Dominte – The Abolition of Man, or How We Forgot the Law of Human Nature: The title of this paper brings together the two books it aims to explore, The Abolition of Man; or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (1943) and Mere Christianity (1952), with a view to contemplating the disorientation, enduring loss, and the fragility of the human condition in a fractured and unbalanced modern society. Referred to as the ‘Law of Nature’ by the older thinkers, the ‘Law of Human Nature’ – the ‘foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in’ is the only one of the rules of the Universe man is ‘free to disobey’ as C. S. Lewis wrote at the end of the first chapter in Mere Christianity; when right and wrong are nothing but negotiable, moral concepts, when the laws of Tao are discarded, it is not only love, courage, self-control, honesty that are lost, for so is genuine humanity, and with it ‘man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man’ himself. Alas, the dawn of the 21st century has once again turned Lewis’s words into prophetic utterance. In an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and post-humanist ideologies, the very boundaries of the human are being redefined, raising urgent questions about agency, moral responsibility, and the survival of the Tao in a technologized, disembodied world.

Since Prudentiusʼ Psychomachia is the first piece of allegoric literature, it is only expected that this poem should arise the interest of such a writer as C. S. Lewis. Within the second part of his study – The Allegory of Love, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia delves into the world of early medieval Latin literature. Here, C. S. Lewis exquisitely etches a learned description of the cultural frame of Prudentiusʼ works, especially for the epic allegory entitled Psychomachia. However, the Oxonian scholar does not think too highly of this poem (Psychomachia is not a good poem, he says). It is our belief that such a view is unfortunately an unexpected and a shallow one. In view of the latest achievements of Classical research, Prudentius is unanimously regarded as a highly accomplished writer, the best of the Late Antiquity period. It is worth noting that in our contemporary times, Prudentius is actually re-classicized, since he was already counted among „heavy” names such as Augustinus and Horatius (as we know from Sidonius Apollinarisʼ Epistulae) in his own period during the end of the 5th century. At a second attentive reading, the lines of Prudentius do not seem the eccentric work of a writer that simply exercises his unbridled versifying skill, a baroque piece of literature avant la lettre. Prudentius is actually very aware of his cultural surroundings and he does not deny the accomplishments of the pagan Classical world (a feature that likens him to the author of Confessiones). His works represent a sophisticated net of references that organically interweaves Christian spirituality, consecrated writers of the Antiquity, and biblical quotations. It is our intention to shed a little light on the complex

Angels, like devils, are creatures of myth in the broadest sense, but they are also part of what Lewis calls the true myth that is Christianity. Although scripture describes angels as “mighty ones”—agents of God’s purposes and reflections of his glory—popular culture has reinvented them in a form that is demeaned and trivialized, a form Lewis called “pernicious.”. Lewis’s analysis of cultural history (in The Discarded Image) reflects on the ‘old’ view of angels. His own depiction of angels in his poetry and fiction is an imaginative reinvention. He returns to the authority of scripture, and to medieval and renaissance thinkers and artists, receiving their understanding of angels, and reflecting on that understanding in order to reinvent it. But at, the same time, Lewis was also reinventing a literary genre. Although he complained about “too many writers of science fiction” Lewis respected the genre enough to reinvent it, creating a totally new sort of tale of interplanetary travel—stories in which “strangeness moves us more than fear, and beauty stabs with tingling spear.” His Space Trilogy depicts the strangeness and beauty of angels, stressing both their austere inscrutability and their absolute goodness. He becomes almost a visual artist himself when, in Perelandra, he depicts them in multiple complex forms—“darting pillars filled with eyes . . . pulsations of flame . . . billowy masses . . . concentric wheels moving with sickening slowness . . . burning white like white-hot iron.” Such a reinvention resurrects the lost and (for Christians) the correct view of angels, and it is also a startling reminder that angelic forces are at work in our world though we perceive it only dimly, if at all.

Owen Barfield, (1898 – 1997), ‘The first and last Inkling’ was described by C.S. Lewis as his “wisest and best of my unofficial teachers”. They met in 1919 and soon they were each other’s “second-friend”. The talk’s topic is how my Grandfather (same name) fulfilled this role as “unofficial teacher” to Lewis and how instrumental he was in converting Lewis to theism. Thereafter their continued friendship was mutually rewarding. From 1922 when Grandfather published Lewis’ poem ‘Joy’ to when he ceased being Lewis’ literary executor in 1983, his practical involvement with Lewis complemented his philosophical teachings. By exploring how they influenced each other, discoveries can be made through a process of compare and contrast which can shed light on similarities and differences that were not only pertinent in their time, but more importantly are becoming pivotal in ours. C. S. Lewis repeatedly pointed towards Grandfather’s work. Going so far that in 1954 CSL tried (but failed) to have OB substitute him at Oxford Uni.

Lewis encouraged us to read across the ages, and to never let little things (like war, for instance, or illness) get in the way of our reading and studying literature, and discussing it. This paper attempts to briefly address the question: With whom do we see Lewis in conversation from ages before his time, during his life, and now after, and to what effect? To do so, it will peek into the Great Conversation in which Lewis immersed himself as a student and educator, as a writer and speaker, and most importantly as a man. It will explore his interactions with a few greats such as Cicero, Spenser, Samuel Johnson, and Jane Austen before considering the Modernists, Wordsworth, MacDonald, and Chesterton and finally his posthumous discussions with and influence on Post Modern authors such as Rowling and Buechner.

The fall of man is a central topic in C. S. Lewis’s work. Like John Milton in Paradise Lost (1667), Lewis wishes to introduce the story of the Fall to his contemporary readers in a way that speaks directly to their experience. This wish to retell the story of Adam’s temptation and fall can be found in his novel The Magician’s Nephew, in The Screwtape Letters, and in his science-fiction novel Perelandra, which builds on the Miltonian and biblical vision. The way Lewis writes about temptation in his books – sometimes in a comic manner, sometimes with a very dark approach – provides a good angle to analyse this aspect of his work. The temptations Lewis describes in his fictional writings never sound outdated or old-fashioned: while some are common to men of all centuries, others, he admits, have evolved. For instance, Screwtape explains that the “gluttony of Delicacy” has emerged alongside the “gluttony of Excess” in our times, the former being the more recent development. C. S. Lewis’s engagement with the tradition of Fall literature remains highly relevant, as the 21^st century confronts both enduring and novel forms of temptation. C. S. Lewis’s retelling therefore both reflects a literary tradition – that of Genesis and John Milton – while also reinventing this tradition to make it relevant to his 20th-century readers, who have different preoccupations, worldviews, and temptations from those of previous centuries. His literature thus proves to be a valuable asset to his readers in their spiritual warfare.

(1937-1963) Before the American Narnia films, C. S. Lewis was virtually unknown in France. Today, although most French people will react to the word “Narnia”, the name “C. S. Lewis” is still likely to be met with a blank stare. His fame is a long way from the level it has reached in the English-speaking world, be it in academia, in Christian circles, or in popular culture. However, this was not always the case. Lewis was never as well-known as he was in Britain or America, but during his lifetime he achieved a certain fame in secular universities, in Christian intellectual circles and, to a lesser extent, among readers of science fiction and fantasy. He was best known as an academic. There were interactions between him and French authors or scientists in the form of exchanges of letters or gifts of books. Most importantly, two French universities awarded him honorary doctorates in literature. He also achieved a certain renown as a Christian writer. He became famous in the United States when the American version of The Screwtape Letters was published in 1943 and the book was translated into many other languages, including French. It was followed by The Great Divorce, Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain. His readers, however, were mainly a small number of Catholic intellectuals. As for his science fiction and fantasy books, only Out of the Silent Planet and the first two Chronicles of Narnia were published during his lifetime and they did not do well enough for the publishers to want to continue. Nevertheless, some French critics called Lewis “famous” during his lifetime, something that would not happen today.

S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, the sixth volume of The Chronicles of Narnia, demonstrates the author’s remarkable ability to transform architectural space into a sophisticated literary device that both honors and revolutionizes established narrative traditions. This presentation/paper examines how Lewis’s architectural imagination-particularly his detailed rendering of subterranean palaces, the geometric precision of Harfang’s giant castle, and the liminal spaces of Underland-functions as setting, as well as becoming a sophisticated literary device that reflects and reinvents established narrative forms. The presentation analyzes how Lewis integrates his theological metaphor from Mere Christianity-that divine transformation builds “a palace” rather than renovating “a decent little cottage”-directly into the story’s spatial architecture. Each threshold crossed and step ascended or descended carries echoes of spiritual growth, where the architecture itself breathes and pulses in harmony with the narrative, becoming a subtle yet essential character in the story’s fabric. The underground realm’s serpentine passages and Harfang’s geometric structures work as both homage to classical descent narratives and reimagining of spatial symbolism in fantasy literature. Central to this analysis is the Silver Chair itself: a piece of architectural furniture that functions as throne, prison, and ultimately, the barrier that must be shattered for transformation to occur. By analyzing Lewis’s deployment of vertical and horizontal axes, inscribed architectural surfaces that function as readable text (the carved message “UNDER ME”), and constrictive spaces that weaponize aesthetic seduction (the beautiful silver chair, the gem-lit palace) against dimensional awareness, this paper demonstrates how architectural form, aesthetic experience, and theological narrative operate as integrated elements of Lewis’s spatial imagination. Through this spatial imagination, Lewis pioneers approaches to fantasy world-building that integrate medieval romance, classical mythology, and Christian theology into a cohesive narrative architecture that continues to influence contemporary literature, film, and digital media.

In his 1996 book Surprised by Laughter and again in a series of lectures for the C. S. Lewis Institute in 2014-15, Lewis scholar and professor of film Terry Lindvall explores and expands upon Lewis’s views on the role of humour in the Christian life. Lindvall organizes his analyses round the four causes of human laughter identified by Screwtape: joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy, pulling examples from Lewis’s letters, fiction, literary and cultural criticism, and writings on Christian life and doctrine and distinguishing between the positive aspects of laughter and its destructive and dangerous sides. Aside from Lindvall’s work, however, little is made in academic criticism of how and why Lewis used humour in his work. In this presentation, I want to focus on a close and extensional reading of the episode in The Magician’s Nephew in which a jackdaw, upon asking Aslan if he has made the first joke in Narnia, is told instead that he is the first joke. Later the jackdaw wonders if Uncle Andrew might be the ‘second joke’, still, it seems, trying to work out what it means to make or be a joke. These crucial distinctions open an array of possibilities for exploring how to understand the connections and aesthetic possibilities opened by language for laughter and justice, as noted by Aslan in the initial scene, but also for fear and shame, as experienced by the jackdaw and later (in the Narnian chronology) by Mr Tumnus and the beavers. As the first laughter of the Narnian animals is unconditioned by anything that has come before in their existence, it holds the status of an event that retroactively re-invents what has come before and has consequences in terms of the Narnians’ future development as subjects. I will discuss how Lewis’s use of humour in this episode anticipates recent developments in psychoanalytically and philosophically informed literary criticism.

This paper describes the formation, nature, and cultural trajectory of Prayerworks as a musical form that emerged from aspects of the ministry praxis of a large Evangelical church in Sydney, Australia, between 1998 and 2004. Prayerworks released four albums of contemporary music that sufficiently resembled the forms and textures of modern praise and worship to garner an audience based in evangelical congregations. However, the music of Prayerworks also departed significantly from the musical tropes of congregational worship, instead favouring metaphor, narrative, and immersing the listener in broad sonic landscapes. While has Prayerworks gained acceptance among conservative Christian listeners, it has also gained a much wider audience far beyond the reach of the evangelical church and the purview of its leaders, namely, it became embedded in significant cultural contexts including the televised broadcast of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games and its subsequent adoption by Royal Brunei Airlines as the underscore for its arrival guides. In this way, Prayerworks can be understood as a reinvention and reimagining of the literary approaches of C. S. Lewis, but in musical form.

The Narnia series exemplifies the ways in which Lewis appealed to both secular and religious readers, not only by virtue of his religious pluralism but also through his approach of presenting spiritual ideas in metaphor, allegory and narrative. A systems perspective of creativity proposed by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi is the theoretical underpinning for this paper, which will also incorporate a 12-minute recording of the band from a 2000 release. Prayerworks is reforming to record a fifth album, and this will be foreshadowed.

From the beginning of his fiction project in “Bleheris,” “Loki Bound,” and Dymer, to his mature and popular fantasy novels, C.S. Lewis is always writing about tyranny. When Lucy first finds her way into that magical world, the land is under the yoke of a century-long winter. We learn about this “always winter and never Christmas” reign through the stories and folklore of the Narnians as they live lives of resisting or giving in to the pretender’s cruel reign. Slaves are liberated in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Silver Chair, and The Horse and His Boy as Narnia negotiates its spaces between and among empires and colonies. In The Last Battle, these pressures finally collapse as colonial powers flood into Narnia through ways opened by conspirators. But in Prince Caspian, we learn of the tyranny from various angles. In this “Return to Narnia,” a remnant of Old Narnia tells the successor to the tyrannical throne—the Telmarine Prince Caspian himself—about Narnia’s long history of loss and suffering under tyranny. We hear the stories of oppressors and the oppressed as old Narnian comes alive again in an alliance of settlers and indigenous peoples. Prince Caspian, hungry for magic, mystery, and meaning, thrills when he discovers that “All you have heard about Old Narnia is true. It is not the land of Men. It is the country of Aslan, the country of the Waking Trees and Visible Naiads, of Fauns and Satyrs, of Dwarfs and Giants, of the gods and the Centaurs, of Talking Beasts.” But then he discovers that “It is you Telmarines who silenced the beasts and the trees and the fountains, and who killed and drove away the Dwarfs and Fauns, and are now trying to cover up even the memory of them.” Prince Caspian’s peculiar position of colonial power in sympathy with the colonized invites us to reimagine Lewis’ fiction in a context where we are coming alive to the stories of lands and their peoples that where often destroyed or forced underground in what Lewis called the death-consumed “social sewerage system” of European colonial rule. Lewis gives space to the heart-breaking tales of the indigenous folk, like Dr. Cornelius, without pretending that colonial systems of government and social development can simply be uncreated. In this paper, I walk beside Prince Caspian as he considers his role in the ancestral and ongoing (though illicit) land of the Narnians, while I live in the ancestral and ongoing territory of the Mi’kmaq people of Prince Edward Island. Europeans came and conquered, driving the Old Islanders, who once had the wealth of all of these lands and rivers and woods, into tiny hamlets, claiming to rule this place, re-educating the people, and, like the Telmarines, suppressing the old stories and wild ways of being in the world. Without ignoring the cultural distance of time and space between my kitchen table and C. S. Lewis’ writing desk, Lewis helps us reimagine a way beyond course binaries that dominate (especially American) social discourse—guilty and innocent, ignorance and knowledge, despair and naivete—and invites us to listen, live, and lead in transformational ways within the tensions of our ever-changing colonial spaces.

In old Romanian literature—and, more broadly, in Eastern European literary tradition—there is essentially one fundamental type of journey, even if it is recounted in various ways. This is the path that leads the hero from an extraordinary yet ordinary life to the very gates of Paradise. There, he encounters an Edenic realm inhabited by beings whose condition differs from that of ordinary people—one that closely resembles, though does not entirely replicate, Adam’s state before the Fall. This is the same journey that takes Saint Brendan to the Terra Repromissionis Sanctorum and later inspired C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In old Romanian culture, this narrative appears in various forms: Alexander the Great’s journey to the Land of the Merry People, Zosima’s travels to the same place, the pilgrimage of Serge Regen and Theophilus to Saint Macarius of Rome, and Seth’s quest to reach the gates of Paradise. But what is it that all these heroes seek? By analyzing these texts and their profound impact on ordinary people—an influence that has ensured their survival within small communities—I propose an answer: they seek to tame death. I interpret this in the same way that The Little Prince must tame the Fox before he can leave Earth for his home planet. In my paper, I aim to demonstrate that every delay and trial along the hero’s journey serves to gradually prepare him to face the edge of the human condition—not with fear, but with joy and wisdom.

Simona Catrinel Avarvarei, Nicoleta Rodica Dominte – The Abolition of Man, or How We Forgot the Law of Human Nature: The title of this paper brings together the two books it aims to explore, The Abolition of Man; or, Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (1943) and Mere Christianity (1952), with a view to contemplating the disorientation, enduring loss, and the fragility of the human condition in a fractured and unbalanced modern society. Referred to as the ‘Law of Nature’ by the older thinkers, the ‘Law of Human Nature’ – the ‘foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in’ is the only one of the rules of the Universe man is ‘free to disobey’ as C. S. Lewis wrote at the end of the first chapter in Mere Christianity; when right and wrong are nothing but negotiable, moral concepts, when the laws of Tao are discarded, it is not only love, courage, self-control, honesty that are lost, for so is genuine humanity, and with it ‘man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man’ himself. Alas, the dawn of the 21st century has once again turned Lewis’s words into prophetic utterance. In an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and post-humanist ideologies, the very boundaries of the human are being redefined, raising urgent questions about agency, moral responsibility, and the survival of the Tao in a technologized, disembodied world.

C. S. Lewis reflected major biblical narrative patterns in his works of fiction, which can be called “archetypes,” using Northrop Frye’s terminology from his renowned work Anatomy of Criticism. The Abrahamic archetype refers to the story of the eponymous patriarch as told in Genesis 22, focusing on his act of obeying the will of God by accepting to sacrifice his son, Isaac, contrary to his wish, which was naturally to protect him. This paper analyses how Lewis used this pattern in a variety of works of fiction, for example in The Screwtape Letters, in a philosophical way, or in The Magician’s Nephew, when Digory chooses to listen to Aslan rather than to his ardent desire to save his mother, or in Perelandra, in the character the Green Lady, who explains that her obedience to Maleldil stems from her love for him. The archetype under scrutiny also entails a substantial reward: as Abraham was blessed with a multitude of descendants and with victory over his enemies, so the Lewisian characters that obey the will of a superior power are blessed beyond their expectations. The paper also explores the reverse scenario, in which some characters do not recognise any transcendent instance, but think of themselves as an embodiment of the overman, expressing their Nietzschean thirst for power under the claim of a high and noble destiny. The cases that will be discussed are Queen Jadis and Uncle Andrew from The Magician’s Nephew, who explain their violation of moral rules by considering themselves exceptional beings. In a perfect narrative symmetry, these antagonists receive a curse as a result of their insolence, which mainly consists of the ruin of their plans. The interpretation of these examples will shed some light on the way Lewis used this fascinating archetype in his fiction with a clear apologetic aim.

In 1927, Harvard medievalist Charles Homer Haskins published The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century. His portrayal of the twelfth century as the decisive rupture between medieval and modern (rather than Burckhardt’s fifteenth) became a key point of debate in subsequent historiography. Yet despite rejecting the fifteenth-century “Renaissance,” Haskins still accepted the Enlightenment framework of progress inherent in Burckhardt’s periodization, merely adjusting its pace and timing.

A wholesale rejection of modernity’s progress came fifty years later through Catholic historians such as Jean Leclercq and Chrysogonus Waddell. At the fiftieth anniversary conference on Haskins’s book, they presented the twelfth century not as a recovery from the Dark Ages but as the zenith of a world misunderstood by modernity. For them, the early medieval world was not alien but the creation of a Catholicism with which they identified.

My paper considers the role of religious belief in writing medieval history by comparing C. S. Lewis’s understanding of the twelfth century with that of Leclercq and Waddell. Following Dennis Danielson, I treat Lewis as an intellectual historian, drawing on The Allegory of Love and his essays “Historicism” and De Descriptione Temporum. Unlike the Catholic historians, Lewis does not portray the Middle Ages as the triumph of Christian civilization; in De Descriptione Temporum he calls the Dark Ages “catastrophic.” How does Lewis reconcile this with his Christian belief, when the catastrophe coincides with Europe’s christening? I suggest that comparing these distinct Christian historical approaches—Catholic and Anglican, celebratory and skeptical—offers a revealing case study of how positionality shapes medieval historiography and our framing of sameness and alterity.

This paper explores the continuity and evolution of metaphors used to conceptualize the soul and morality, from ancient Greek philosophy to the contemporary theory of metaphor. It argues that, despite shifts in philosophical paradigms, key metaphorical structures remain surprisingly stable. Through a close comparative analysis of primary texts by Plato and C. S. Lewis, alongside metaphors identified in recent studies within the contemporary theory of metaphor, this study traces how concepts like the soul and morality are persistently framed through metaphorical language. The corpus includes selected metaphors from Plato and Lewis, as well as examples drawn from the Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) literature. Additionally, the paper provides a linguistic analysis of selected metaphors and their Romanian translations, examining the degree of cultural specificity. The results suggest that the metaphors maintain their cognitive and rhetorical power across historical, linguistic, and cultural boundaries. Finally, the paper considers the ethical dimension of metaphors, particularly from C. S. Lewis’s perspective, by exploring the definition of a “good” metaphor, how or if it differs from a metaphor being precise or imprecise, true or false, and whether these two dimensions are connected in any way, as well as the role of metaphoric language in conveying truth.

I intend to shed new light on both the nature and purpose of C. S. Lewis’s Original Moral Argument (LOMA). By LOMA I mean the argument Lewis first conceived and composed as wartime radio talks that later became Book I of Mere Christianity. In Part One, I advance two theses concerning its provenance: first, that Lewis conceived LOMA as a stand-alone argument, not as a prelude to Mere Christianity; and second, that his aim was not to prove God’s existence but to prepare his listeners for the gospel by awakening conscience. In Part Two, I explore two defining features of LOMA. The first is its wartime shock: speaking to an audience confident of its moral high ground during World War II, Lewis seeks to convince the listener not of her innocence but of her guilt—moral judgment is not only for the Nazi but for each of us. The second is the indispensable and multifaceted role that moral bankruptcy plays in advancing LOMA’s preparatory aim. I conclude by arguing that imagination completes LOMA’s work: reason brings us to the brink – recognizing guilt, need, and the plausibility of help – while imagination makes the law felt, moving us from acknowledgment to contrition and finally to hope.

This is the basic argument of my proposal, rather than the full paper, as that is how I have understood the application process. Sartre’s existentialism, as expressed in Being and Nothingness (1943) and summarized in Existentialism is a Humanism (1946) placed the individual mind at the heart of the life of the free individual, whose constitution meant that this individual was condemned to be free, that is to make himself and his own values as there were not gods and no values to follow and gained world-wide fame. That was what it was to be truly human. However, he was unable to sustain this position and moves over a period of time to supporting justice, civil rights and eventually coming close to theism by the end of his life. Lewis, in the Abolition of Man (1943), a work relatively unknown for many years, except in C. S. Lewis circles, takes the opposite position, outlining the reality of the natural law of the Tao, and arguing briefly, but powerfully that ‘In the Tao itself, as long as we remain within it, we find the concrete reality in which to participate is to be truly human: the real common will and common reason of humanity, alive and growing like a tree, and branching out, as the situation varies, into ever new beauties and dignities of application’ (AM, 45). In our current intellectual climate, Lewis’s thought is coming to be more and more recognised, and people are becoming increasingly aware of the God-given values that have shaped western civilisation, and which underpin Christian belief, which was the trajectory of Sartre’s thought, which could not face the absurdity of his position. The paper will present this argument in detail.

The unconventional love story between C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman has fired the imaginations of novelists, playwrights, and movie makers for several decades. One particular retelling of their story has been revised several times, each time moving farther from the real events until the story would have been unrecognizable to those actually involved. William Nicholson’s screenplay for the 1985 BBC production Shadowlands was adapted in 1989 as a stage play, which was adapted again into the 1993 international theater release of the same name starring Anthony Hopkins. Finally, the story was adapted once more into the novel Shadowlands by Leonore Fleischer.

With each retelling, the story refocuses attention onto either different aspects of the story itself, or different perspectives on Lewis and his beliefs. Some changes are relatively insignificant, such as the number of Joy Davidman’s children or whether or not Lewis ever drove a car (spoiler alert: Lewis never learned to drive a car). Others have more significance, including the addition or removal of actual or fictional events or characters.

This paper will explore the changes across the different revisions, comparing them not only to each other but also to the letters of both Lewis and Davidman, as well as biographies of both. This will give us the opportunity to explore both Lewis’s character and faith as presented in each retelling.

Joseph A. Kohm, Jr., Lynne Marie Kohm – Lewis’s Influence on the Law: The writings and works of C.S. Lewis have influenced culture through literature, but also through science, academia, education, the arts, and numerous aspects of society. This proposal uniquely explores how Lewis’s work has affected, amended, and altered the law, and how his work has inspired law as literature. Raised by a father who served as a public court Solicitor in Belfast, Ireland, a legal perspective was not foreign to him. And now this proposal reveals how Lewis’s ideas have been considerably influential to judges and jurists. It has been observed that law follows culture, but law is also a directive in culture, and often leads theory and practice in any society. Presented by two lawyers, this paper will explore, case by case, the influence of C. S. Lewis and his writings in American case law, and in the rule of law generally. It will research and analyze where Lewis has been not only instructive, but influential and why, investigating the path for how he has become somewhat of a cultural icon to learned jurists. Received, reflected, and reinvented, this research will determine any emerging law connections, and discern Lewis’s influence on law and culture, revealing how Lewis’s corpus reverberates through all aspects of a society through its law.

Joseph A. Kohm, Jr., Lynne Marie Kohm – Lewis’s Influence on the Law: The writings and works of C.S. Lewis have influenced culture through literature, but also through science, academia, education, the arts, and numerous aspects of society. This proposal uniquely explores how Lewis’s work has affected, amended, and altered the law, and how his work has inspired law as literature. Raised by a father who served as a public court Solicitor in Belfast, Ireland, a legal perspective was not foreign to him. And now this proposal reveals how Lewis’s ideas have been considerably influential to judges and jurists. It has been observed that law follows culture, but law is also a directive in culture, and often leads theory and practice in any society. Presented by two lawyers, this paper will explore, case by case, the influence of C. S. Lewis and his writings in American case law, and in the rule of law generally. It will research and analyze where Lewis has been not only instructive, but influential and why, investigating the path for how he has become somewhat of a cultural icon to learned jurists. Received, reflected, and reinvented, this research will determine any emerging law connections, and discern Lewis’s influence on law and culture, revealing how Lewis’s corpus reverberates through all aspects of a society through its law.

Reflections on the Legend of the Red Cross Knight is a post-critical retelling of Book I of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590), blending literary criticism, autobiographical narrative, and theological reflection. The project examines how critical analysis and creative practice might be brought into closer partnership to renew engagement with foundational questions of religion in a pluralistic, secular age. It offers theological, philosophical, and auto-critical readings of representations of selfhood in Book I, engaging interlocutors from the imaginative, aesthetic, and ecclesiastical traditions of both past and present, including George MacDonald, C. S. Lewis, and Ewan Fernie. Drawing on the rich theoretical potential of intercessors such as these, the project explores how The Faerie Queene may resonate with readers today, focusing on the theme of Holiness (or Wholeness), defined as the unrestricted flourishing of individuals, relationships, and communities. In doing so, it explores the generative potential of literary criticism to develop new connections and contribute meaningfully to personal, religious, and civic life in the present.

A careful reading of any work of Lewis’s fiction—from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to Till We Have Faces—reveals a grid of theological and philosophical underpinnings. These theo-philosophical substrates don’t merely help prop up Lewis’s fictional plots, they converge to empower theme, mold the story’s vision of meaning, and serve Lewis’s greater rhetorical aim. All of Lewis’s fiction, perhaps no story so displays this theological and philosophical convergence so well as The Great Divorce. Lewis’s 1945 novel about a purgatorial landscape in which souls are presented with a post-mortem chance to choose salvation sit atop of an elaborate schema of theological and philosophical paradigms. I maintain that a chief paradigm in The Great Divorce is time. Not only does Lewis underlay his plot with the nature and purpose of time, but he also employs time as a force of spiritual process. It is time, imbued with spiritual meaning, that works within those undecided characters in The Great Divorce with dynamic force. I will explore the nature of that chronological dynamism and argue for Lewis’s use of time as a means of sanctifying power. Time, I will maintain, in conjunction with the characters’ free will, has the potential to achieve a spiritual state that transcends itself. It’s only through time that Lewis’s characters are able to step into eternity.

In this presentation, I explore potential paradigms that might encourage a contemporary Asian-American reader encountering C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia for the first time. While certainly not exhaustive, these perspectives hopefully cultivate honest yet hospitable dialogue, particularly for those in my audience who feel culturally barricaded from these beloved works of literature. Firstly, I argue that The Chronicles of Narnia is a predecessor of the isekai genre within anime. The isekai genre, literally, “different world,” grounds itself in the trope of the protagonist being transported to fantastic/fictional worlds, or parallel universes. In recognizing Narnia as an instance of this genre, the series’ perennial relevance may be more fervently impressed upon generations Z and Alpha, which are characteristically taken with anime narratives.

Secondly, I delve into the core values depicted throughout the series that may especially resonate with this highlighted demographic of readers. These values include filial piety and demonstrated loyalty through acts of service. By examining The Chronicles of Narnia through these cultural lenses, I hope to catalyze new ways for this literature to inhabit present-day contexts. This presentation primarily relates to the sections of cultural studies and literary criticism.

Emerging as a cultural icon and a Christian popularizer, C S Lewis also attracted critical responses as a lightning rod, often for Christianity itself. This paper aims to investigate the primary accusations made against Lewis during his life and after his demise. While many friendly witnesses such as Owen Barfield, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Elizabeth Anscombe, disagreed with Lewis about his views on the imagination or apologetics, they remain witnesses for the defense, with Lewis often altering his works. However, ranging from early scuffles with the brilliant biologist J. B. S. Haldane, the anti-vulgar, modernist W. Norman Pittinger, the wildly hysterical and independent Ayn Rand, and the snippy and obscure F. R. Levisites through postmodern critics like Philip Pullman, “critics” snub, scoff, spit, and kvetch over Lewis. Even beyond these allegedly rational complaints, the popular culture itself (e.g. Saturday Night Live, South Park) tweaks aspects of the legacy of Lewis, particularly The Chronicles of Narnia, in order to ridicule Lewis. In a process of discovery, this presentation aims at taking depositions from the plaintiffs in order to streamline the process by focusing litigation on the issues that are actually disputed and relevant. Perhaps more like a mock trail than a moot court hearing, this investigation aims at letting all the witnesses air their grievances, even if those creatures resemble the Gryphon and Mock Turtle.

When talking about the Waterboy’s hit single, “The Whole of the Moon”, Mike Scott, the lead singer-songwriter, explained that “‘The Whole of the Moon’ is about someone like C.S. Lewis, who seemed to see so much and explore issues much more deeply than most people.” Scott read The Chronicles of Narnia when he was 8, as well as Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength by the age of 12. Lewis’s influence on his songwriting is made evident by numerous references to these books, such as “Savage Earth Heart”, “Universal Hall”, and “Further Up, Further In”. Scott says that Lucy’s entering Narnia through the wardrobe introduced him to ‘the notion of finding other worlds, other realities.’ For Lewis, this was because there existed a higher reality than this world, ‘that of the spirit,’ being a Christian and a Platonist (but not a Gnostic). In addition, Scott and Lewis were both inspired by George MacDonald, W. B. Yeats, and the island of Ireland where they lived. Nevertheless, Scott has criticised the Christian dogma in Lewis’s writing, saying that “the Christian framework of much of his work renders it frustrating to a non-Christian like me.” For Lewis, Christianity is where religion reached its true maturity, where the hints of Paganism were fulfilled, but for Scott, all religions point to the “Millennial Truth”, claiming that everyone is or can become God, with Jesus being one example. My paper will explore how Lewis’s belief in a spiritual world appealed to Scott, their common influences like George MacDonald and W. B. Yeats, their relationship with Ireland, and how they differ in their approach to Jesus Christ.

Rev J B Phillips (1906 – 1982) was another writer with similarities to C S Lewis. He wrote about 30 books for a readership of “general Christian interest”, at a non-academic level. He was educated at Emmanuel School, in South London and moved on to Emmanuel College and Ridley Hall in Cambridge, before becoming an Anglican Pastor. His Church had an active Youth Group, but for them, Bible-reading had the problem of being in “old” English (300 years). Phillips started to translate it into current English, beginning with St Paul’s letters. He invited Lewis to write the Foreword, but he also suggested a title for the book, “Letters to Young Churches”. This Foreword says much about Bible translation principles, over the centuries, particularly for “non-theological” readers.

The “original” Old Testament was written about 3500 years ago, in Hebrew and Aramaic (the “ancient” language of the “ordinary” people, later spoken by Jesus!). It was translated into “international” Greek – the Septuagint Version (516 BC-70 AD) and spread widely. The New Testament was written in international “Koine” Greek. Subsequently, both were translated by St Jerome in 383-404 AD, into the new-international Latin. This travelled throughout Europe, including England. But Latin was not the language of the ordinary people….. The need for “popular” access was seen by John Wyclif (1324-1384) and others, who produced the first of a long line of English translations. The Renaissance saw an upsurge in teaching and understanding of Hebrew and Greek and gave the opportunity for translation from the original languages, particularly in Germany and England. The insights gained led into the Reformation of the Church in the 16th Century. There was much opposition and several translators were martyred!   Eventually, in 1611 in England the “Authorised”, or “King James” Version was a major step forward. It is still in wide use, particularly in America, but further translations followed… In the 1940s and 1950s, the “Dead Sea Scrolls” were discovered in Israel – ancient Hebrew documents from before translation problems weakened the quality of working from Greek and Latin into the vernacular. Translation from translations has problems! Good translations then continued to appear and update the language used. There have also been many “popular” transliterations (giving good readability, but sometimes at the  expense of theological accuracy)! In 1927, Dumitru Cornilescu produced a good Romanian translation, which is still widely read. The problem of language use will continue over time, and with that comes readability problems. Newer Romanian versions have already been appearing. This all fits in with the points made by Lewis, which remain valid. The Bible is always relevant, so there will always be a need for “better” translations to be produced, used and enjoyed. Indeed, it has already been Received, Reflected on and “Reinvented”. Repeatedly!

C. S. Lewis lived in the midst of a shift from classical education approaches to more progressive theories of education promoted by theorists such as B. F. Skinner. Lewis observed some practical consequences of these theories, and his insights into various facets of learning contribute to discussions about how young people develop. He promoted an important concept of education in The Abolition of Man, describing a specific type of moral imagination as necessary to becoming fully human. Lewis placed significant educational value on fairy tales, a genre that he broadened to include fantasy and myth. This inquiry will bring together his essays on the topic of fairy tales and education, as well as his exemplar in The Chronicles of Narnia, which he considered an instance of the genre. This presentation will explore his belief that fairy tales aid the imagination to develop a whole individual. Important themes include how this type of literature helps people perceive a deeper reality and transcendent values, how it arouses a longing for goodness and justice, and how it guards against false impressions or escapism.

We inhabit a culture of loneliness and fragmentation in which truth is often collapsed into taste and argument seldom persuades; yet music still gathers strangers into one attentive body, at concerts, in liturgy, and through film, hinting that meaning may be received as harmony before it is grasped as proposition. The central thesis is that music is a mode of truth and a path of return: a participatory language by which creation discloses order, invites communion, and awakens longing for God.

The argument begins with Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, where Aslan sings Narnia into being, and Tolkien’s Ainulindalë, where the Ainur shape the world in music; it then turns to Lewis’s The Discarded Image to retrieve the older imagination of a musically ordered cosmos. From these texts “truth as harmony” is shown as a theological–philosophical key for our age: music integrates memory and emotion and re-tunes fractured selves and communities to reality’s given order, as an echo of the First Music. The paper combines literary close reading with analysis in participation, communion, and virtue, adding some arguments given by physics and cognitive science that support the thesis, and concludes with cultural, pedagogical, and liturgical implications for practices that train contemporary hearers to rejoin the harmony of creation.

In his preface to Athanasius of Alexandria’s De incarnatione verbi dei, C. S. Lewis encouraged Christian readers to keep at “the reading of old books”. For Lewis, such reading was not a closed-minded deference to ancient authorities but a form of chronological humility with the power to open up trans-historical vistas onto the Christian faith. Lewis modelled this approach and thus his writings reflect a wide and diverse engagement with medieval Christian authors. This paper extends Lewis’ method by putting his writings on “Divine Love” (most notably in The Four Loves and The Allegory of Love) into direct conversation with two influential eastern Christian theologians of love, Macarius-Symeon (also known as Pseudo-Macarius) and Isaac of Nineveh (also known as Isaac the Syrian). While it is unclear if Lewis knew their writings directly, this paper demonstrates that he adopted a similar style of writing (one may even say a genre) of humble and apophatic reflection on Divine Love and the spiritual life.

The paper proceeds in three parts. First it identifies two key themes about Divine Love found both in Lewis’ writings and in the Syriac tradition of spiritual writing stretching from Macarius-Symeon (fourth century) to Isaac of Nineveh (seventh century): the role of love in the human transformation to divine life and the apophatic nature of that Divine Love. Next the paper examines Lewis’ medieval influences, especially the reception of Pseudo-Dionysius in seventeenth-century English thought. The paper concludes by contrasting Lewis, Macarius-Symeon, and Isaac by evaluating Lewis’ downstream position in the Christian tradition. The paper presents the rhetorical strategies by which Lewis both humbly deferred to and successfully emulated the earlier apophatic traditions which has shaped his theology: “And with this, where a better book would begin, mine must end. I dare not proceed. God knows, not I, whether I have ever tasted this love.”

The 2025 CSLKS conference theme is summarized in three words:  Received, Reinvented, and Reflected. This encapsulates nicely the middle years of Lewis’s life when he received the Christian faith and became a believing self in the early 1930s; reinvented himself between 1933 and 1945 from mild-mannered Medieval literature professor at Magdalen College, Oxford to a leading apologist for Christianity and widely known British public intellectual; and, finally, concluded in 1945 with reflections on his new vocation as a defender of the Christian faith, the first and last time Lewis publicly addressed this subject.  This paper identifies and discusses some of the high points of Lewis’s 1945 lecture.

As any reader of The Chronicles of Narnia is aware, C. S. Lewis drew inspiration from Turkic culture, ranging from the obvious—Turkish Delight—to the obscure—did Lewis name Tash after a Turkish word for stone? ِWhether coincidental or intended, these references present both opportunities and challenges for Turkish and Azerbaijani translators seeking to adapt the series. For instance, how should Aslan, which is the Turkish word for lion, be translated? Should the original name be kept or should a suitable domestic alternative be found? Despite the obvious references to Turkish culture, study of the Turkish and Azerbaijani translations of The Chronicles represents a lacuna in contemporary studies of Lewis. While all seven books are readily available at major bookstores in Baku or Istanbul, they remain virtually undiscussed in academic spheres. Even basic information about the Azerbaijani version cannot be found online, nor is it included on websites listing translated versions of Narnia. This paper investigates translations of Lewis in the Turkic context and relates the efforts to the broader efforts to translate The Chronicles. The first half discusses unique aspects of the Azerbaijani translation, focusing on the way that Azerbaijani expressions, traditional mythology, and formality transforms the original’s childlike language.

The second half of the paper engages with a broader question relevant to non-European evaluations of Lewis: how do translators adapt Lewis’s Christian story for audiences unfamiliar with the cultural or historical context of the original work? Special attention is given to the “domestication” and “foreignization” choices that the translators made, particularly with regard to major omissions or cultural substitutions for the original English text. The paper concludes by situating the Azerbaijani translations within the broader field of Narnia translations, emphasizing the shared challenges that translators of Lewis have faced, while highlighting the unique decisions that must be made when adapting the works for a non-European, post-Soviet, and largely Muslim audience.

Before there was C.S. Lewis, there was the man he called his “master”—George MacDonald. Though often misunderstood or marginalized, MacDonald profoundly shaped Lewis’s imagination, theology, and literary technique. The paper I wish to present begins with a reassessment of four common misconceptions about MacDonald: that MacDonald was a failed minister/that he lacked literary depth/that he enjoyed little success as an author/that he was forgotten after his death.

In the second half, I trace MacDonald’s influence on Lewis through close readings of The Great Divorce, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and Miracles. I focus on five key Macdonaldian motifs: nonlinear time, the construction of credible secondary worlds, the symbolic integration of natural and supernatural elements, the spiritual function of objects, and the redemptive power of faith. I also explore how Lewis, in his book Miracles, echoes MacDonald’s epistemological assumptions, particularly his view that imagination is a pathway to truth. Far from being a quaint Victorian moralist, I intend to show that the true vision of MacDonald emerges as a theologically imaginative pioneer whose narrative tools helped Lewis craft both his fantasy and apologetics. This paper seeks to reposition MacDonald as a central rather than peripheral figure in understanding the roots of Lewis’s mythopoeic vision.

C.S. Lewis and Iris Murdoch were contemporaries in mid-century Oxford.  Their worlds overlapped in many ways, but they were not close.  Despite their significant differences, they both recognized that a distinction should be drawn between the “nice” and the “good.”  They also shared a suspicion that a culture of “Niceness” was deeply corrupting to the pursuit of moral excellence.  After some brief biographical observations, I will examine how Lewis and Murdoch understood the Nice, why it posed such an attractive temptation to society, and how this temptation should be resisted by those who recognize the enduring value of the Good.

While scholars typically view C. S. Lewis’s scholarly and creative careers as separate achievements, his deliberate cultivation of both theological creativity and historical grounding reveals a sophisticated vocational architecture that challenges contemporary assumptions about career specialization. This paper draws on a two-career framework model I have developed as an independent researcher of personality and work, a model combining personality science, strengths theory, and theology to guide individuals through mind renewal, identity discovery, and calling activation.

This dual-calling model stands in stark contrast to society’s promotion of specialization, as the widespread burnout from over-specialization is increasingly evident. While existing Lewis scholarship focuses on his literary technique or theological content, this study examines his vocational integration as a model for contemporary career architecture. Lewis offers the ideal case study because he dared to live the life of dichotomies that millions imagine but fear to embrace: moving between security and adventure, chaos and order, heart and mind, strength and growth, the natural and the real; journeys all humanity must take to access our full created potential.

Drawing on Lewis’s BBC talks and his theological framework in Mere Christianity Volume IV, this analysis demonstrates how Lewis strategically developed both his dominant gifts (theological creativity and systematic analysis) and emerging strengths (historical grounding and audience attunement) across dual career tracks. Lewis himself described receiving a personality that was not his own in his journey from “natural man” to “real man.”

Lewis’s vocational integration models not just professional versatility but spiritual wholeness, offering both theoretical insight for vocational counselors and practical wisdom for contemporary professionals. His life demonstrates that authentic calling requires not choosing between strength and growth, but strategically integrating both; a model increasingly vital for navigating today’s complex career landscape.

S. Lewis’s book Miracles. A Preliminary Study (1947) summons the reader to a quest for the existence of miracles as a possibility of envisaging meaning beyond matter and a future beyond life as we perceive them. Framing the discussion about miracles in the context of Bible apologetics, Lewis brings into discussion some key miracles that have become milestones in the history of mankind, without which the course of humanity may have looked disturbingly different. The present paper considers how Lewis’s intricate plea for the belief in miracles has been reduced to essence by doodling (CSLewisDoodle). While the term ‘doodling’ entails the sense of a rather superficial visual rendition of ideas, the art of doodling Lewis’s Miracles – especially The Grand Miracle – testifies to a profound pondering on the key concepts and a careful selection of images that are meant to leave the viewer with the core of Lewis’s perspective. The whole debate seems to center around purpose and free will, both of them pertaining to the immaterial world which helps people make sense of the material world. Lewis’s own artistry lies in the ability to render abstract concepts by means of powerful images, much like Jesus’s parables. The questions that the present study aims to answer are whether the selected doodle images and short interpretive texts do justice to Lewis’s complex writing and whether the viewer is given sufficient support to rightfully fill in the gaps with missing information and strong enough prompting to proceed to an attentive consideration of Lewis’s text itself.

Threads of Responsibility is the creative concept and process of upcycling or remaking textile waste through community-based sustainability initiatives, which combines textiles and experiential education. It allows us to explore how small, creative actions can lead to meaningful environmental change. The Project featured: Game Changers, is an example of how partnerships, in this case with Manchester United Foundation, University of Manchester and local schools. The project invites students and young people to transform surplus football shirts—mass-produced polyester garments often destined for landfill—into useful, wearable items such as bags or toys. By repurposing real waste materials and offering participants guided access to tools and techniques, the initiative cultivates both practical skills and a sense of agency in addressing sustainability challenges (Laitala et al., 2015). This act of remaking or upcycling is more than a practical solution to textile waste. It becomes, as C. S. Lewis envisioned, an act of stewardship. Drawing on Lewis’s reflections in The Abolition of Man, Game Changers fosters a culture where participants are encouraged to take moral responsibility for creation—caring for resources and extending the life of materials in a society shaped by disposability and fast fashion. Moreover, the project captures Lewis’s recurring theme of the ordinary becoming extraordinary. A worn football shirt—considered useless by industry standards—becomes a symbol of creativity, care, and environmental action. As students and community members cut, stitch, and reimagine these garments, they participate in a process of transformation that echoes Lewis’s vision of how seemingly humble beginnings can lead to heroic outcomes. By bridging environmental education with hands-on practice, Game Changers demonstrates how sustainability is not just a technical challenge but a moral and imaginative one. It is through the lens of shared responsibility and everyday creativity that this project invites us all to see waste not as an end, but as the beginning of something extraordinary.

From meme to meditation, from critical extraction to participation, from personal appropriation to political subversion, from imitation to imagination, the reception of the works of C.S. Lewis and Kindred Spirits encompasses a vast range of motivations as well as modes of engagement. Slower than the metaphor of inspiration, deeper than the metaphor of application, eating, in its hunger and satisfaction, in its ingestion and digestion, in its metabolism and development, presents a mode of reception that is both modeled and idealized by the Inklings. Those who have read widely and deeply of this epistemic community (who have foraged and feasted) know that we have been fed from a larder well-stocked with classical, medieval, and modern provisions. This is no cram, but lembas, with the potential to feed the deepest aesthetic, philosophical, and theological cravings, and to fortify and hearten us on our journey in dark days. This paper will explore the ways in which this ubiquitous metaphor of eating might inform and invite incarnational and creative relationship with the images, ideas, and stories of Lewis and Kindred Spirits.

Philokalic literature represents a collection of Christian sapiential writings that codify the general framework of life in Christ lived in the human context, bringing together authors who lived between the 4th and 18th centuries AD. A special place within Philokalic literature is occupied by the warfare against passions, traditionally listed as seven according to Evagrius Ponticus or eight following the teaching of St. John the Roman. The theological consideration of the Christian Church has developed this theme extensively, both in specific literature and in the field of arts in general. To this day, this consideration continues to take on ever-renewed forms, a sign of a living, fresh, and compelling vision for contemporary readers. It is somewhat surprising to encounter the same ideas in C. S. Lewis’s now-classic novel The Screwtape Letters. Surprisingly, Screwtape’s ideas are consistent —though excessively repeated: however, the devil lacks originality, and proposes rather antiquated methods, all of which ultimately offer nothing new. The entire Philokalic tradition bears witness to this, reflecting through its descriptions, counsels, and insights the very same stratagems of Screwtape, unchanged from some seventeen centuries ago to the present day. This paper aims to explore this consistency, focusing on several key points, and starting from C. S. Lewis’s novel. Beyond a few footnotes that might suggest a possible Philokalic influence of the novel, we also wish to highlight a certain continuity with the paideic Tradition of Antiquity, which makes Screwtape’s advice a representative image of the passing on of experience and knowledge from Antiquity to the present day.

The contribution of C. S. Lewis to (the history of) literature or to the 20th century Christian apologetics is mostly unknown in Serbia – apart from its Protestant communities. Although the Narnia series has been translated and published soon after the success of its film adaptations, few Orthodox theologians and authors have read C. S. Lewis and appreciated rare Serbian translations of only two of his apologetic works – Mere Christianity and Screwtape Letters. Decades after the translations of these two titles, IFES Serbia has started the project of translating eight of Lewis’ works, most of which have never been translated into Serbian. As a co-editor of this series and the translator of three of its titles, we aim at sharing this experience, with an accent on the challenges of Lewis’ syntax and content compared to Serbian syntax and cultural background, especially as concerns the targeted audience in Serbia, predominantly Orthodox Christian.

Walter Hooper relates in his essay “Oxford’s Bonny Fighter” how Lewis had no use for existentialists. Whether Kierkegaard or Sartre, Lewis did not take to their works and argued against their various reasonings. This paper will seek to show distinctions between Lewis’s own philosophical basis, and that of a few noted existentialists. It will begin with a brief discussion of the situation of existentialism at the time of Lewis, and the distinguishing features of the various ideas reacting to Hegel’s all-encompassing philosophy. It will move to Lewis’s objections of the philosophical movement. With his assessment of Sartre, the paper will examine how Lewis considered this philosopher’s ideas to hail from an earlier era, and utilize sources such as the Socratic Club minutes, and letters to colleagues. It will examine how Lewis reacted to the thought of other existentialists. It will endeavor to give those without much background in existentialism some grounding in the history and notable ideas of movement, while still providing insight into the reasoning that Lewis presented. It will suggest that Lewis’s struggle with the movement was based on his understanding of the nature of ontology. However, it will also suggest how Lewis incorporated compatible ideas into his own writing. Finally, it will examine the nature of Lewis’s ontology using this focus on existentialism as a background for contrast. As literary criticism and interpretation is impossible without philosophical structures, this paper will seek to examine Lewis’s discursive insights, which continue to give substance and inspiration to other disciplines.

Till We Have Faces is not merely, as its subtitle proclaims, “a Myth Retold,” but a myth reinvented: a pagan tale transformed into a profoundly Christian narrative. This paper argues that C. S. Lewis’s reinvention of the Cupid and Psyche story is shaped by the medieval values of harmony, immersion, and humility, as described in The Discarded Image. Lewis’s fascination with medieval cosmology pervades much of his writing and critics have explored its influence on works such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, and The Great Divorce. Less attention, however, has been given to Till We Have Faces—a work whose pre-medieval setting might seem an unlikely place to find a medieval atmosphere and understanding of the divine. Yet situating the novel within the context of Lewis’s wider medieval scholarship not only clarifies why he chose to retell the Cupid and Psyche myth, but also illuminates the nature of the divine–human relationship at the novel’s heart and, ultimately, Lewis’s theological imagination.

This research explores how sociolinguistic variables function in the fictional works of C. S. Lewis, particularly in The Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, and Till We Have Faces. The main objective is to examine how language use reflects characters’ social class, age, culture, and moral values. The study addresses the question: how does Lewis use differences in speech to shape identity, convey relationships, and enrich fictional worlds? The method applied is qualitative discourse analysis. Dialogues and narration from a range of characters and texts were studied closely to identify patterns in vocabulary, grammar, dialect, register, and invented sociolects. Secondary sources in literary and linguistic criticism supported the analysis. The findings show that Lewis carefully adapts his characters’ speech to reflect their social background. For example, noble characters use formal, educated language, while working-class characters speak in dialects such as Cockney. Age also influences language: children speak in casual, idiomatic phrases while older characters use formal or even archaic expressions. In That Hideous Strength, language differences across centuries become a key plot device. Lewis also invents fictional dialects-such as the ceremonial speech of the Calormenes or the otherworldly Old Solar language-which serve both narrative and symbolic purposes.

The study concludes that Lewis’s use of sociolinguistic variation is more than stylistic. It plays a central role in building believable characters, marking group identity, and reinforcing ethical messages. By giving each character or group a distinct way of speaking, Lewis creates layers of social and cultural meaning within his fantasy and science fiction worlds. His writing demonstrates how language, even in fiction, mirrors real-world divisions while offering imaginative ways to bridge them. This analysis reveals Lewis’s deep understanding of language as a tool for both storytelling and social insight.

In several of his works of literary criticism, C. S. Lewis reflects on the qualities or capacities that readers either possess or ought to cultivate. He is particularly generous toward children as readers, offering them the credit of a profound intuition for truth, value, and beauty. At the same time, the adult readers come to his attention, though with a more nuanced perspective. This paper seeks to explore the idea of reading as a pilgrimage, aiming to find out what is required for it to become a truly transformative journey. As Lewis signals in An Experiment in Criticism (and other places), there are pitfalls along the way, and some may even fall (willingly?) into them. Nevertheless, there are also treasures and rewards for those who persevere and fight to self-deception. A second goal is to show that this journey is not merely a literary one but also a spiritual one – a seemingly accessible goal. Yet it is a journey in which literature (especially fiction and poetry) and faith are uniquely interdependent, in a manner that most likely defines the pilgrimage itself. For this purpose, this paper will also examine the kind of qualities Lewis is deducing from his readers’ literary preferences and reading styles, observing how he connects these characteristics with virtues that extends beyond the act or habit of reading. It seems that Lewis is using the position of his readers as a mirror for their conviction and beliefs – or, ultimately their character. And his judgements are far from lenient.

This paper calls attention to the need both to reflect upon and reinvent C.S. Lewis’ understanding of reason and its relation to nature in light of recent developments in philosophy of mind. It will be suggested that reconciling Lewis’ argument from reason with the view of nature expressed in works such as The Abolition of Man is the way to do this. In the former, reason and nature are presented as inherently at odds; in the latter, practical reason and nature are closely tied. I will take issue with Lewis’ unquestioning acceptance of the irrational, mechanistic view of nature in his argument from reason – a concession he was happy to make, as it allowed him to assert that reason is ‘supernatural’. Recent movements in philosophy have, however, recognised that Descartes’ division of mind and nature has led us down a dead end, so have sought to reintroduce rationality into nature itself. A kindred spirit of Lewis’ must therefore show why postulating a creator outside nature is preferable to the view that mind is a property of the fundamental physical constituents of the universe. I will therefore seek to sketch a way to update the argument from reason and reconcile its view of nature with that of Abolition, so to present a challenge to the new Naturalism. It would also contribute to surmounting the boundary placed in the Modern era between reasoning mind and irrational nature, between inner experience and bare physical reality: between the realm of beauty and the realm of actuality. An integrated view of reason and nature, as both participating in the divine Wisdom, can lead us towards a recovery of what was true in the premodern ‘discarded image’ of reality, allowing us to catch “for a moment the music of the turning spheres.”

The paper explores the transformative narrative of hope as it emerges in the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, Simone Weil, and C. S. Lewis, examining how Lewis’s literary articulation of hope resonates with, and reinterprets, deeper theological and philosophical traditions. Through this interdisciplinary lens, the paper considers how Lewis’s work stands in dialogical continuity with these kindred spirits, transposing complex existential and theological ideas into accessible literary forms. Whereas Kierkegaard’s notion of hope involves the existential “leap of faith” in the face of despair, and Weil conceives of hope as active engagement with affliction and divine grace, Lewis offers a narrative embodiment of these themes in The Chronicles of Narnia. His characters’ journeys reflect the inward movement of the soul towards faith, redemption, and meaning. By translating philosophical and mystical insights into story, Lewis reinvents inherited traditions in a manner that continues to inspire readers across cultures and generations. The paper investigates how Lewis’s imaginative reworking of themes such as suffering, grace, and spiritual transformation functions within literary history and cultural reception. Particular attention is given to the ways in which these themes, filtered through Lewis’s narrative art, have been received and (re)interpreted by diverse audiences, and how they contribute to a broader understanding of hope in literature and the arts.

This paper aims to introduce the British writer Dorothy Leigh Sayers (1893 – 1957), an author who tackled a variety of literary genres as fiction, non-fiction, drama, poetry, essays, reviews and advertising. Although she did not enjoy special recognition from literary critics during her lifetime, Sayer’s works were extremely popular and appreciated. She is less known and studied than C. S. Lewis, but the number of works devoted to her in recent years, with different, often contradictory approaches, is impressive. Her books have never ceased to be published, and the interest of the general and specialist public has grown with the passage of time. There is something special in the unmistakable voice that shines through her writings and reveals her being “full of life”, demonstrating her talent as a masterful creator of words. As her work has been little explored in Romania, Sayer can be very relevant to contemporary literature specialists through her famous detective stories and plays, but also to theologians interested in the role of narrative, drama or analogy in theological inquiry and the creative communication of theological ideas.

A significant element of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy is that they are in part written in response to C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, not least their view of childhood. Pullman professed to hate the Narnia books “with deep and bitter passion, with their view of childhood as a golden age from which sexuality and adulthood are a falling away”. But is this an accurate appraisal of the Narnia books, and are the ideas of childhood and growing up in His Dark Materials really that different? This essay will engage with the ideas of childhood and growing up communicated by Lewis and Pullman explicitly and implicitly in TCON and HDM, focusing on the contrast and similarities between Lucy and Lyra as curious young protagonists. HDM suggests a secular humanistic view where maturity and growth into adult wisdom necessarily involves rebellion and a Fall from innocence, while Narnia aligns with a Christian viewpoint that sees not rebellion but the choice of obedience to God as the test of growing up. These contrasting viewpoints underlie common interpretive controversies around Narnia such as the “Problem of Susan”, but in Lyra and Will having to be separated to build the Republic of Heaven in their own worlds, and in the Pevensie children having to find Aslan by another name in their own world, both stories share a common thread in the importance of imagination as a preparation for making a difference in one’s own world.