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1 - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2010

Robert MacSwain
Affiliation:
University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee
Michael Ward
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

C.S. Lewis is both a phenomenon and an anomaly. He is a phenomenon in that, almost fifty years after his death, he remains one of the world's most popular and best-selling authors. And he remains so, not just in one genre but many: children's literature, science fiction, theology, philosophy, Christian apologetics, autobiography, essays, the novel, poetry. Remarkably, all of this output was incidental to his professional career as a highly respected scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature at Oxford and Cambridge. Despite enormous changes in the way literature in general is studied and despite substantial shifts in the scholarly landscape of his specific areas of expertise, his academic publications are still of considerable importance to students and specialists alike. Rather oddly for such a literary and donnish figure, even his personal life is part of the phenomenon. Numerous biographies have been written about him. Shadowlands, the story of his late marriage and eventual bereavement, won popular and critical acclaim as a television film, a stage play, a radio-play, and a movie. His most famous children's book - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (the first of the Chronicles of Narnia) - also achieved success as a major motion picture, and became one of the top-grossing films of 2005.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Robert MacSwain, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, Michael Ward, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis
  • Online publication: 28 November 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521884136.001
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  • Introduction
  • Edited by Robert MacSwain, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, Michael Ward, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis
  • Online publication: 28 November 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521884136.001
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by Robert MacSwain, University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee, Michael Ward, University of Oxford
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis
  • Online publication: 28 November 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521884136.001
Available formats
×