Monthly Archives: May 2013

A Poetic Tribute to The Great Knock

In an October 2012 blog, “A Tribute to a Mentor,” I told the story of C.S. Lewis’ great teacher, William Kirkpatrick. He was called “The Great Knock” by the Lewis family, and he absolutely transformed C.S. Lewis’ way of thinking. … Continue reading

Posted in Lewis Biography, Reflections | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

“The Planets” in C.S. Lewis’ Writing

It does not take long for a serious reader of C.S. Lewis to realize that he was in love with cosmology—the planets and the stars as they sit within the vast expanse of space. His first popular fiction was science … Continue reading

Posted in News & Links, Reflections | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 51 Comments

A Statistical Look at C.S. Lewis’ Letter Writing

I have often heard that C.S. Lewis is one of the great letter writers of history. I can hardly make any comparison; the only other letter collections I have on my shelf are single volumes by J.R.R. Tolkien, Dylan Thomas, … Continue reading

Posted in Lewis Biography, Original Research | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 40 Comments

The Effect of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Mythopoeia

I am often asked what brought me into the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. While I do love the books, it wasn’t Narnia that first captured my imagination as a thinker. It wasn’t even the world of Middle … Continue reading

Posted in Creative Writing, Lewis Biography, Reflections | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 104 Comments

What Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress Teaches us about English and Education

One of my first posts on A Pilgrim in Narnia was the confession that I had not really ever read John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). I’m pretty sure I had pretended to read it. I had played the … Continue reading

Posted in Reflections, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments