The fellowship : the literary lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams /
Zaleski, Philip,
The fellowship : the literary lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams / Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. - First edition. - 644 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Prologue: Dabblers in ink -- "A star shines on the hour of our meeting" -- Heaven in a biscuit tin -- Advent lyrics -- Hard knocks and dreaming spires -- "Words have a soul" -- A mythology for England -- Wanted: an intelligible absolute -- A meeting of minds -- Inklings assemble -- Romantic theology -- Secondary worlds -- War, again -- Mere Christians -- Loss and gain -- Miracles -- "Making up is a very mysterious thing" -- The long-expected sequel -- The dialectic of desire -- Inklings first and last -- Epilogue: The recovered image.
"A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis"-- C. S. Lewis is the twentieth century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles through woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of their times. Here, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections, and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis maps the medieval and Renaissance minds, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years---and did so in dazzling style. --From publisher description.
0374154090 9780374154097
2014040390
Barfield, Owen, 1898-1997.
Lewis, C. S. 1898-1963.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1892-1973.
Williams, Charles, 1886-1945.
Inklings (Group of writers)
Literature and society--History--England--20th century.
Oxford (England)--Intellectual life--20th century--Biography.
Biographies.
The fellowship : the literary lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams / Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. - First edition. - 644 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Prologue: Dabblers in ink -- "A star shines on the hour of our meeting" -- Heaven in a biscuit tin -- Advent lyrics -- Hard knocks and dreaming spires -- "Words have a soul" -- A mythology for England -- Wanted: an intelligible absolute -- A meeting of minds -- Inklings assemble -- Romantic theology -- Secondary worlds -- War, again -- Mere Christians -- Loss and gain -- Miracles -- "Making up is a very mysterious thing" -- The long-expected sequel -- The dialectic of desire -- Inklings first and last -- Epilogue: The recovered image.
"A stirring group biography of the Inklings, the Oxford writing club featuring J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis"-- C. S. Lewis is the twentieth century's most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met every week in Lewis's Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles through woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of their times. Here, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings' lives and works. The result is an extraordinary account of the ideas, affections, and vexations that drove the group's most significant members. C. S. Lewis maps the medieval and Renaissance minds, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant. Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years---and did so in dazzling style. --From publisher description.
0374154090 9780374154097
2014040390
Barfield, Owen, 1898-1997.
Lewis, C. S. 1898-1963.
Tolkien, J. R. R. 1892-1973.
Williams, Charles, 1886-1945.
Inklings (Group of writers)
Literature and society--History--England--20th century.
Oxford (England)--Intellectual life--20th century--Biography.
Biographies.