Ink Spots and Tea Stains: What We Learn from C.S. Lewis’s Writing Habits (October 2024 SPACE Course Announcement)

Posted on September 11, 2024 by

Greetings fellow pilgrims on the path of curiosity and imaginative adventure. Things have been quiet here on the blog front, but some great new things are happening in the background. One of these projects is a brand new short course with Signum University’s SPACE program. SPACE is an online, interactive, non-credit short course program. It is really quite a gorgeous program for folks who want to engage in great discussions and learn about things they love.

Last fall, I taught “Reading L.M. Montgomery as Fantasy: Anne of Green Gables,” and it was one of my favourite teaching experiences ever. In fact, there might be a chance to run the course again in November. If you are interested, you can “wish list” the course here. For details on SPACE, including the cost of courses ($100-$150 USD), click here.

This year, I am offering what I think is a unique approach both to C.S. Lewis and to creative writing as an art. “Ink Spots and Tea Stains: What We Learn from C.S. Lewis’s Writing Habits” is a confirmed October SPACE module. I have spent hundreds of hours in C.S. Lewis’s archives, working with original manuscripts and the various drafts in his writing process. I have studied his letters, diaries, and autobiographical materials to discern his process. And I have researched what we can know about Lewis as a prose writer and poet in all his modes, including experts like Walter Hooper (a literary secretary), Diana Pavlac Glyer (on creative collaboration and the Inklings), and Charlie Starr (who has developed a system of analyzing and dating Lewis’s handwritten manuscripts).

Without ignoring the lines themselves, what can we learn from C.S. Lewis about writing, imaginative expression, personal discipline, and literary subcreation when we look between, beside, and behind the lines.

The name for this course comes from my experience visiting the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library, and sitting with the manuscript of The Screwtape Letters. There were a number of ink spots–Lewis used writing technology that matched his creative process–and there was a prominent round stain from one of his mugs of tea on a neat, clean page. In that moment, I began to understand Lewis as an artist. I also realized that much of what has been said about Lewis the Writer needs some rethinking.

You can find out more about the course and how to register here. Let me know if you have any questions. http://blackberry.signumuniversity.org/r/n9xF0y

C.S. Lewis is one of the most prolific and influential writers of the 20th century. And yet, in his early career as an Oxford don, he viewed himself as a failed poet. Moreover, his most canonical and transformational writing happened during the most stress-filled periods of his life. This short course allows students to peek into the writing life of C.S. Lewis. Our goal is to see through the lines of printed text by visiting the letters and archival remains of Lewis in a virtual setting. Most of C.S. Lewis’s papers remain undigitized and unpublished, available only locally at archives in North America and England.

As Professor Brenton Dickieson has visited these archives, he is able to invite students to appreciate C.S. Lewis’s writing life by looking at the way that he consciously and unconsciously built his literary career. This course is for writers who are developing their own habits and literary life-prints, as well as folks who are curious about C.S. Lewis’s life beyond the biographies and bestselling books.

We are not doing text close readings, but looking at the “paratextual” information available to us: writing drafts, letters, diary entries, manuscripts and typescripts, titles, and the like.

Week 1: Lewis: Pen, Ink, Paper
• C.S. Lewis’s Single-jointed Self-Conception as a Writer
• What Lewis Says about his Writing Habits
• Legendary Bonfires, Stuffed Dolls, and American Suckers: A Story of Lewis’s Papers and Manuscripts
• The Screwtape MS. Story: Part 1

Week 2: Leaves, Bombs, Stains
• The Screwtape MS. Story: Part 2
• “Villainous Handwriting”: Charlie Starr’s Lewis Handwriting and Rough Draft vs. Fair Draft
• Reconsidering the Lindskoog Affair with Manuscript Evidence of “The Dark Tower”

Week 3: Joy, Theft, Death
• “The Quest of Bleheris”: Lewis’s Teenage Novel

Week 4: Hits and Mythes
• Is it True that Lewis Wrote in a Single Draft?
• A Grief Observed
• Tumbling Through the Wardrobe: The Discovery of Narnia
• Arthurian Torso
• A New Sketch of Lewis’s Writing Process(es)

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A Mailbox Note on Mark Noll’s C.S. Lewis in America (2023)

Posted on July 25, 2024 by

Who can count all the ways that books happen to us? There certainly isn’t a single pathway of discovery when it comes to the books that occupy not just our shelves but also our hearts and minds. This book, Mark Noll’s C.S. Lewis in America: Readings and Receptions, 1935-1947, came in the mail from the publisher (IVP Academic) with no note about who sent it and no sense of what they wanted me to do with it. As I am interested in what we call the “reception history” of Lewis’ work—and I have a general understanding of what one does with books—I thought it was most natural that I read it.

C.S. Lewis in America comes out of the Hansen lecture series at the Marion E. Wade Centre on the campus of Wheaton College. A couple of years ago, I reviewed an earlier version of these lectures, published as Splendour in the Dark: C.S. Lewis’s Dymer in His Life and Work (IVP Academic, 2020). In that volume, David C. Downing created a new annotated version of Lewis’s mid-1920s epic narrative poem, Dymer, and Jerry Root supplied the initial lecture series. Following each of the three lectures, a scholar of Interest responds—not just creating a debate but something like call and response, where the scholars tee up fresh ideas from their various perspectives and specialties.

C.S. Lewis in America: Readings and Receptions, 1935-1947 follows the same pattern with three movements:

  1. “Surprise: Roman Catholics as Lewis’s First and Most Appreciative Readers” (with a response by Karen J. Johnson, an expert on religion and race)
  2. “‘Like a Fresh Wind’: Reception in Secular Mainstream Media” (with a response by Kirk D. Farney, an historian with an interest in ministry and media)
  3. “Protestants Also Approve (But Evangelicals Only Slowly)” (with a response by Amy E. Black, a researcher on religion and American politics)

Naturally, there is no Lewis annotation, but an appendix includes two critical articles by Charles Brady from 1944—including one that I was unsuccessful in finding when I first looked for it a decade ago.

Though he is probably most well-known for The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (1994), Mark Noll is an historian who—like George Marsden—helps us discern the rapidly evolving shape of America’s religious history. The three lecture/chapter titles give a clear outline of the topic as he focuses on the ways that American scholars, theologians, journalists, and critics read and reviewed Lewis’ books from the first American editions in the mid-1930s until the point that he landed on the cover of Time Magazine in 1947.

In each lecture/chapter, Noll uses that reception history to discuss critical features of three historical moments:

  1. American Roman Catholicism as it strove to escape isolationism, deepen its roots in American theological and intellectual culture, and grapple with rapidly changing cultures of race and class around them
  2. Mainstream American intellectual, literary, and media cultures as they negotiated traditional popular respect for religion with emerging secular thought and the crises of the Great Depression, war, and technological change
  3. Mid-20th-century Protestantism in these same radical social changes, with Liberal and Mainstream thinkers responding critically and often positively to Lewis, while the movement that would become Evangelicalism was far more tentative about bringing Lewis into their faith conversations

Honestly, in a busy period where it has been hard to focus my mind well, I really enjoyed just sitting down and reading this book. I put my pencil away and read leisurely, trying to find time to read each lecture and the response when I knew I had space to think about the whole.

And while this piece of mail was a surprise, I knew the book was going to land on shelves eventually. I no longer remember how Mark Noll and I connected, though I think it was a Regent College (Vancouver) event, where he is now Research Professor of History and where I have done some online teaching in spiritual theology. In any case, we got talking and found we shared an interest in historical materials on C.S. Lewis that don’t appear in the places we might expect them.

In this desire to dig into the past, though, I am merely an amateur. Mark and Maggie Noll—the husband and wife team—partnered for a deep dive into every single review and response to Lewis’s writing that they could find in American papers, magazines, and journals in the period (1933-47). An earlier review of findings appeared as “C.S. Lewis in America, 1933-1943” in The Undiscovered C. S. Lewis: Essays in Memory of Christopher W. Mitchell, edited by Bruce Johnson. Although the analysis in this earlier article and the new book is relatively short, the spreadsheet behind these materials represents years of work.

C.S. Lewis in America, then, provides researchers with the leads they need to approach questions of Lewis and American culture in broad terms, and the particular questions of Roman Catholic social culture, American secular thought, Mainstream Protestant theological development, the birth of Evangelicalism, and the remarkable story of how in America Lewis becomes a media superstar, a scholar of note, and the imaginative saint next door. For the reader and researcher of Lewis’s thought, Noll introduces dozens of thoughtful responses to his work that are usually unknown to most of us.

So, although I kept the pencil tucked firmly behind my ear while reading this book, it really is one that is meant to be marked up and to prepare the way for others to do their own work. I don’t know who sent me this book and certainly did not contribute anything to its creation, but I am appreciative of the discovery. It’s been a good year for literary postal surprises, as I noted in a recent response to Amy Baik Lee’s Homeward Ache. Perhaps I should take a walk to the corner and see what is waiting for me!

See here for information about each lecture, the respondents, and the accompanying handouts. https://www.wheaton.edu/academics/academic-centers/wadecenter/events/ken-and-jean-hansen-lectureship/noll-2022/

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Two Free Online Inklings Events Today: George MacDonald, Charles Williams, and J.R.R. Tolkien

Posted on July 19, 2024 by

I am pleased to announce two online Inklings events that I will be attending today:

“George MacDonald and the Prophetic Imagination” with Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson and Trevor Hart, moderated by Brenton Dickieson (CSLKS Connected)

This is a C.S. Lewis and Kindred Spirits Society Connected event, continuing the series from our friends at Agora Christi in Iași, Romania. I am moderating this conversation between Dr. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson and the Rev’d Canon Dr. Trevor Hart as we talk about how George MacDonald thought theologically about the imagination in prescient and transformative ways. This conversation continues a series of events celebrating the bicentennial of MacDonald’s birth. We’ll see you at 12:00 pm Eastern!

Time: Fri, Jul 19, 2024: 12:00 pm EDT (or 6:00 pm EET, local Romania time)

Link: Register here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeCS_Mwg_vEC6XcF-IlBXcj5ACfai88imtFBUu2uaKdRQhk5w/viewform.

“’Our Dear Charles Williams’: Tolkien’s Friendship with the Oddest Inkling” with Sørina Higgins (IFF)

At the zenith of the Inklings’s social and creative energy, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote a poem about “Our Dear Charles Williams.” It is a long poem—over three pages—full of praise, gentle teasing, and inside jokes. Many of its references may escape the casual reader or even the Tolkien scholar who is less familiar with Williams’s works. The poem is especially important because of the discussion (and sometimes debate) concerning the precise nature of the friendship between Tolkien and Williams.

Dr. Sørina Higgins, author, lecturer, acclaimed Charles Williams scholar, and curator of The Oddest Inkling, will be the guest expert on Inkling Folk Fellowship this Friday, July 19th, at 4 p.m. (Eastern). IFF is an online, free, mostly weekly meeting designed to talk about the arts, faith, literature, and creativity.

Time: Fri, Jul 19, 2024: 4:00 pm EDT

Link: See the Facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/share/GcqqKQ5dDr2diYXe/.

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What Are Your Favourite Nonfiction Book Covers?

Posted on June 14, 2024 by

Confession: I judge books by their covers. I understand that I am sanding across the grain of all wise folks who can put their thoughts in a single Tweet or readable on a bumper sticker. But I simply do judge books by their covers. It is not that they have to be perfect–and I still love the look of a clothbound volume with black or silver lettering. However, when a book is beautifully designed, I find the whole reading experience is more rich.

I talked about this in a recent review of Amy Baik Lee’s This Homeward Ache: How Our Yearning for the Life to Come Spurs on Our Life Today. It is just a beautifully designed book, from the lovely cover that captures the sense of the reading experience to the typeset and subtle details. On its own, it was a good book–a great book, I felt–but the good design enhanced its loveliness for me.

At the recent George MacDonald bicentennial conference in Wheaton, IL, I was handed a collection of essays, Unsaying the Commonplace: George MacDonald and the Critique of Victorian Convention, edited by Daniel Gabelman and Amanda B Vernon (who both turned out to be brilliant and generous of spirit). The book cover is gorgeous–at least to my eye.

I also love that it matches a previous volume in this GeoMac Victorian series: Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy, edited by Michael Partridge and Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson (also wonderful people). Besides trying to introduce this series to readers, I want to note that these are books by Winged Lion Press–a small publishing firm publishing books about the Inklings and other mythopoeic writers simply because it is a beautiful thing to do. Small press runs and very little cash, and still these beautiful designs (and I like the design of some other George MacDonald works, like the Phantastes annotated edition and essay sets on Phantastes and The Back of the North Wind).

Of course, there could be hundreds of beautiful book covers. My visually impaired memory doesn’t allow me to keep them all in my head, but it doesn’t stop me from loving them. Here are some nonfiction book covers I like in my Kindle collection:

So I am a sucker for a cool design. I am satisfied with none of the covers for The Screwtape Letters, but I love some of the newish Tolkien 1st Age and 2nd Age materials (often illustrated by Alan Lee), and the non-Middle-earth materials.

I have an “Author’s Questionnaire” in front of me for an upcoming book, and I am not in the dock: will I be able to guide my design team towards good book cover design? Honestly, I don’t know if they are doing a twopence book cover design or are really going to dig in and do well. Still, it has made me thoughtful.

So I would love to know from you all what your favourite nonfiction book cover designs might be. I’ve talked about terrible book covers (see here and especially here), but now it’s time to share things we love. Add them in the comments below with a link to the book cover, if you can.

While most of the suggestions this far are fiction or have multiple editions, here are some of the noted pieces:

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Upcoming Ursula K. Le Guin Course at Signum University: Recall John Garth, Maximilian Hart, Kris Swank, and Myself on Ursula K. Le Guin, Language, Tolkien, and World-building (Friday Feature)

Posted on April 26, 2024 by
“Ursula Le Guin’s map of Earthsea, a primary piece of world-building by name-making” John Garth

Happy Friday my fellow wayfarers! I am recalling this post from the first edition of the grad course at Signum on Ursula K. Le Guin with the ever-brilliant Kris Swank. I am not teaching this deep-dive course this summer–though I have a lecture-discussion role at one point in the term. I love Kris’ approach to Le Guin as a “world-builder”–a shaper of speculative universes that are as dynamic, alluring, and provocative as her characters, storylines, and poetic prose have always been.

I admit this post is a bit indulgent. I am not able to go to MythMoot XI in June. The theme is, “The Resilience of Imagination,” and I am sad to miss it. Thus, remembering my Le Guin teaching and writing is somewhat of a consolation.

In preparation for the 2021 course, I read through Le Guin‘s entire bookshelf with an online reading group (including her essays, which were formative for me). I continue to be fascinated by her work, having been drawn into the fantasy Earthsea series as a child and young adult. Le Guin fascinates others, as well. Since she passed away, Mythlore has released a full special issue dedicated to Le Guin (see the free articles here), a Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction has been announced, and a peer-reviewed annual scholarly journal has launched, UKL: The Journal of Ursula K. Le Guin Studies. It’s all very cool. 

Thus, here are the details on Kris’ Signum course and some resources that are connected to the original launch. Kris has written a thoughtful and accessible piece about “Ursula’s Bookshelf.” I’ve also tucked some of my Le Guin reflections in with hyperlinks, here and there. You can also check out my reviews and articles, such as:

Be well, 
Brenton

Ursula K. Le Guin: Worldbuilder by Kris Swank (details here)

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018) described herself as “A Citizen of Mondath,” that country of the imagination where live the storytellers, the mythmakers, and the singers. In this survey of her works, we will study Le Guin’s own use of story, myth, and song to build unique worlds at the heart of her fiction: the far-flung Hainish Universe, the intimate islands of Earthsea, the disparate states of the Western Shore, and others. We will examine her literary theories of science fiction and fantasy as vehicles for myth, archetype, and character, and as locations for the exploration of gender, politics, the environment, race, culture, religion, and power. Finally, we will examine how her views evolved over time as she revisited and re-visioned the worlds she had built, and how her legacy empowers other authors to build worlds of their own.

John Garth, “Ursula Le Guin, the language of Earthsea, and Tolkien”

Always thoughtful, writerly historian John Garth posted an article on his website about Le Guin and language. While Le Guin has more fully worked out implications of her Hainish world and its names, the idea of language runs deeply through Earthsea. Garth asks whether there could be a tribute to Tolkien embedded in Le Guin’s classic fantasy novel, A Wizard of Earthsea. I was skeptical at first about Garth’s winsome answer, but found the article brought a number of things together for me. “Ursula Le Guin, the language of Earthsea, and Tolkien” is worth reading not just for the thought experiment but for what the experiment produces when it comes to constructed language invention.

I encourage you to read this piece and John’s other work on imaginative literature, including his books on Tolkien.

Thesis Theater and Paper: Maximilian Hart, “Draconic Diction: Truth and Lies in Le Guin’s Old Speech” (Full Video and Full Paper Link)

I was pleased in 2021 to be the second reader for an exciting project by one of Signum University’s bright MA students. Beginning with curiosity about “Old Speech” in Ursula K. Le Guin‘s Earthsea series, under the supervision of Kris Swank, Maximilian Hart has pulled together a paper that draws on linguistic theory, Platonism, and Taoism in a conversation between Le Guin and the theories of language and story of the Inklings—C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the oft-forgotten but ever-present Owen Barfield. And, best of all, there are dragons–and the question about whether dragons can deceive in Old Speech. If you enjoy Le Guin’s work, or if you are curious to see the Inklings as thinkers in writers in dialogue with a later speculative fiction writer, you can see the full video from Signum’s Youtube page below, and you can find the full paper here.

Maximilian Hart, “Draconic Diction: Truth and Lies in Le Guin’s Old Speech”

Thesis Abstract

Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series enters an ongoing dialogue about the nature of language; in it, she proposes a language spoken by dragons and wizards, “the Old Speech,” a language fundamentally unlike our human languages. It is a language in which it is impossible to lie, a language which is simultaneously descriptive and generative: to say the name of a thing is to have the thing come to be. This Old Speech is what the ancient poetic unity of language—to use Owen Barfield’s terms—might look like: a language in which the Tao, the underlying reality of a thing, is named in every word, a language in which every word is a narrative and true. However, dragons, not the titular, and ostensibly central, wizards, are the true poets of Earthsea; the dragons are the ones who see with a poet’s eye and who are actually capable of wielding the Old Speech in its ancient, unified, fully poetic sense, a sense which encompasses all shades of meaning and existence and narrative in one word. Le Guin’s Old Speech, then, can best be understood as a true language of Barfieldian ancient unity, and the dragons are not liars but poets practicing their art.

For the PDF of the paper, click here.

About the Presenter

Maximilian Hart is a high school English teacher and has been a student at Signum University since 2016. His academic focus is currently on studying the works of Ursula K. Le Guin and her approaches to language. When he’s not reading books for class or his own high school students’ papers, he’s spending time with his wife and children or pretending to improve at chess or woodworking.

About Signum Thesis Theaters

Each of our master’s students writes a thesis at the end of their degree program, exploring a topic of their choice. The Thesis Theater is their opportunity to present their research to a general audience, and answer questions. All are welcome to attend!

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