Tag Archives: The Allegory of Love

Bunyan and Others and Me: Vicarious Bookshelf Friendship and a Jazz Hands Theory of Reading

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Brenton Dickieson

I have been quite open about the fact that I have had some difficulty finding true sympathy with John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. I even went so far as to admit that the text at one time had been for … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged A Pilgrim's Regress, Auerbach, C.S. Lewis, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Dante, Enid Blyton, George MacDonald, Harold Bloom, Huckleberry Finn, Jane Eyre, John Bunyan, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, literary friendship, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott., Mark Twain, Middlemarch, Milton, mimesis, Prince Edward Island, Spenser, The Allegory of Love, The Land of Far-Beyond, The Pilgrim's Progress | 9 Comments

Review of “C.S. Lewis and the Christian Worldview” by Michael L. Peterson

Posted on October 13, 2020 by Brenton Dickieson

Note: This is a longer and more conversational version of a review that was published this week in Literature and Theology, which you can find here (free, open access). For those of you who would like a short, tight review, … Continue reading →

Posted in Reviews | Tagged A Preface to Paradise Lost, apologetics, C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Intelligent Design, Mere Christianity, Michael L. Peterson, Miracles, The Allegory of Love, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, theodicy | 9 Comments

A Peculiar Dedication: C.S. Lewis’ Dedication of A Preface to Paradise Lost to Charles Williams (with a Note on Lewis Prefaces)

Posted on January 16, 2020 by Brenton Dickieson

At A Pilgrim in Narnia we have an occasional feature called “Throwback Thursday.” This is where I find a blog post from the past–raiding either my own blog-hoard or someone else’s–and throw it back out into the digital world. This … Continue reading →

Posted in Lewis Biography, Memorable Quotes | Tagged A Preface to Paradise Lost, Charles Williams, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, John Milton, lion the witch and the wardrobe, Lucy, Paradise Lost, Surprised by Joy, The Allegory of Love, The Discarded Image, The Place of the Lion, The Screwtape Letters, Till We Have Faces | 24 Comments

C.S. Lewis, Sexology, and the OED

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Brenton Dickieson

I came across the word “sexology” in my recent teaching of The Four Loves. I was curious about the history of the word as it seems like the kind of word that Lewis might make up, like Aristocratophobia, Lowerarchy, Disredemption, Grailologist, … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections | Tagged C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, J.R.R. Tolkien, Oxford English Dictionary, philology, Studies in Words, The Allegory of Love, The Discarded Image | 26 Comments

Vote for the Ideal $250 Middle English Library for Teens

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

As I discussed last week, my son is part of a small school with a budding library. Recently a donor has offered a $250 (CDN) donation with a peculiar purpose: to secure Middle English books in honour of a recently … Continue reading →

Posted in Feature Friday | Tagged alliterative poetry, Arthuriana, C.S. Lewis, courtly love, J.R.R. Tolkien, literature, Malory, Middle English, Morte Darthur, Pearl, Piers Plowman, Poetry, Simon Armitage, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Allegory of Love | 18 Comments

The Periods of C.S. Lewis’ Literary Life

Posted on January 22, 2018 by Brenton Dickieson

Last week I took time to share my “cheat sheet“–a project that began for me on a scrap of paper but slowly grew up into an excel sheet resource that I consult pretty frequently. What I wanted to do was … Continue reading →

Posted in Original Research | Tagged Boxen, C. S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, chronology, essays, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mere Christianity, Own Barfield, PhD Research, research, The Allegory of Love, The Pilgrim's Regress, writing, WWII | 40 Comments

The Words C.S. Lewis Made Up: Disredemption

Posted on December 6, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

Behind C.S. Lewis’ famous Narnian chronicles was his experience as a teacher of English literature, a writer about the history of literary movements, and a tinker in other forms of fiction. In that tinkering, and in his letters and essays, … Continue reading →

Posted in Studies in Words, Thoughtful Essays | Tagged A Grief Observed, Agape and Eros., Anders Nygren, C.S. Lewis, ethics, love, self-death, Studies in Words, The Allegory of Love, The Four Loves, Theology of Culture | 10 Comments

The Words C.S. Lewis Made Up: Curialisation

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

We all know C.S. Lewis as the Narnian, but behind the children’s work was his experience as a teacher of English literature, a writer about the history of literary movements, and a tinker in other forms of fiction. In that tinkering, … Continue reading →

Posted in Studies in Words | Tagged Arthuriana, C.S. Lewis, Eugène Vinaver, lion the witch and the wardrobe, Morte Darthur, Narnia, Prince Caspian, That Hideous Strength, The Allegory of Love, The Quest of Bleheris, The Silver Chair, Till We Have Faces, William Morris | 13 Comments

Five Words We Should Banish from our Vocabulary, Or Preventing Verbicide with C.S. Lewis

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

As a voracious reader and great lover of language, C.S. Lewis was concerned about “verbicide,” what he called the “murder of words.” As Lewis describes in Studies in Words (7-8), verbicide happens in a number of ways: Inflation of a Word’s Value: “Inflation is … Continue reading →

Posted in Thoughtful Essays | Tagged allegory, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Harry Potter, Madeleine L'Engle, Margaret Atwood, neologism, post-truth, Studies in Words, The Allegory of Love, The Handmaid's Tale, truthers, Ursula K. Le Guin, verbicide | 49 Comments

John Lawlor on C.S. Lewis’ “The Allegory of Love”

Posted on May 22, 2017 by Brenton Dickieson

The Allegory of Love … is a work which has all the authority of a mind of the highest quality marking out clear paths in a complex and absorbing mass of material. As such it effortlessly joins company with that … Continue reading →