C. S. Lewis and the Inklings

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This volume offers essays on a variety of aspects of the inter-related topics of “hiddenness” and “discovery”: literary, biographical, philosophical, and source study. The Inklings that are examined in this anthology are C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Owen Barfield, with two of their literary predecessors and influences that are included under the term “Inklings” in this anthology: G. K. Chesterton and George MacDonald. Readers will find new territory for further exploration of C. S. Lewis and the Inklings in the areas of 1) creative collaboration among the Inklings; 2) genres (for example, the penny dreadful, Christian liturgical poetry); 3) literary influences (H. G. Wells, Dante); 4) linguistics (Tolkien’s “web of words”); and 5) the convergence of literature and theology. Other areas, which readers would find interesting, are medieval cosmology, classical mythology and Nordic mythology in Lewis’s and Tolkien’s works (the pagan mythology of the Greeks and Romans, and the Nordic myth of Ragnarök). Consequently, Lewis’s A Discarded Image was studied by several contributors to substantiate his knowledge on the medieval cosmos.