3. Lewis ascendant

Abstract

‘Lewis ascendant’ considers C. S. Lewis’s time in Oxford as a fellow at Magdalen College. It discusses his life as a tutor and lecturer, his writing through this period, and his friendships with the Inklings, an informal group of like-minded men who met regularly to converse and to read works-in-progress aloud. The literary result of Lewis’s conversion to Christianity was The Pilgrim’s Regress (1933), which displayed a dynamic new voice backed by a steel-trap mind and an imagination to match. The Allegory of Love (1936), a landmark of literary history, established Lewis as among the major literary medievalists in the world. Very different in tone are his sermons, including ‘Learning in War Time’ and ‘Transposition’.