Event Title
Session 2-A: Human Relationships in the Work of C.S. Lewis
Location
Taylor University, Metcalf 101
Start Date
30-5-2008 10:15 AM
Description
"You Will Have No More Dreams - Have Children Instead: Or, What's a Nice Egalitarian Girl Like You Doing in a Book Like This?" - Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait
This paper attempts to reconcile feminism with Lewis’ hierarchical view of marriage and gender roles in That Hideous Strength. I neither celebrate hierarchy as the Biblical model, nor excuse Lewis on the grounds that marriage to Joy saved him from sexism. Instead, I argue that Lewis’ view of obedience is a fluid and courtly one which the company at St. Anne’s exemplifies in complicated ways; that Mark as well as Jane Studdock needs to learn obedience and humility in order to save their marriage; that Jane’s true sin is not feminism, but a desire not to be “interfered with” by obligations to others; and that her conversion is meant as a model for seekers of both sexes, and is in fact modeled on Lewis’ own.
"C.S. Lewis on Friendship" - William L. Isley, Jr.
This paper will consider C.S. Lewis’s exposition of love as friendship, in particular his chapter on friendship in The Four Loves. After a brief review of his concept of friendship as one of the four kinds of love and its context within the history of Western views on friendship, two features of the essay will be more closely analyzed. These are:
The legitimacy of limiting the definition of friendship to a shared interest.
Lewis’s hesitancy to use friendship as a model for the relationship between God and man.
The paper will conclude with a brief comparison of Lewis’s understanding of friendship with the biblical views, especially those of Proverbs and the Gospel of John, and a proposal for friendship as a model for Christian spirituality.
Moderator: Robert Moore-Jumonville
Event Type
Paper
Session 2-A: Human Relationships in the Work of C.S. Lewis
Taylor University, Metcalf 101
"You Will Have No More Dreams - Have Children Instead: Or, What's a Nice Egalitarian Girl Like You Doing in a Book Like This?" - Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait
This paper attempts to reconcile feminism with Lewis’ hierarchical view of marriage and gender roles in That Hideous Strength. I neither celebrate hierarchy as the Biblical model, nor excuse Lewis on the grounds that marriage to Joy saved him from sexism. Instead, I argue that Lewis’ view of obedience is a fluid and courtly one which the company at St. Anne’s exemplifies in complicated ways; that Mark as well as Jane Studdock needs to learn obedience and humility in order to save their marriage; that Jane’s true sin is not feminism, but a desire not to be “interfered with” by obligations to others; and that her conversion is meant as a model for seekers of both sexes, and is in fact modeled on Lewis’ own.
"C.S. Lewis on Friendship" - William L. Isley, Jr.
This paper will consider C.S. Lewis’s exposition of love as friendship, in particular his chapter on friendship in The Four Loves. After a brief review of his concept of friendship as one of the four kinds of love and its context within the history of Western views on friendship, two features of the essay will be more closely analyzed. These are:
The legitimacy of limiting the definition of friendship to a shared interest.
Lewis’s hesitancy to use friendship as a model for the relationship between God and man.
The paper will conclude with a brief comparison of Lewis’s understanding of friendship with the biblical views, especially those of Proverbs and the Gospel of John, and a proposal for friendship as a model for Christian spirituality.
Moderator: Robert Moore-Jumonville