The C.S. Lewis and Inklings Society is now accepting registrations for its twelfth annual meeting on March 26-28, 2009, addressing the theme “Inklings: Dinosaurs or Contemporaries?” and featuring plenary speaker Peter Schakel. See below for more details. Please click here to see the seminar schedule (as a PDF). A detailed schedule will be available mid-February.

In papers and plenary sessions, the conference will explore ways in which C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield and Charles Williams may (or may not) be particularly relevant to the literary, theological, philosophical and socio-political issues of our own early 21st century times. As in previous conferences, we would like to extend the conversation to include Dorothy Sayers as well, and we would like to open the conversation even a bit further this year by including G.K. Chesterton, a strong-minded proto-Inkling of sorts, in the mix. What might this diverse and pleasantly provocative circle of thinkers have to offer to the world of ideas that we find ourselves in?

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Welcome to Tumnus’s Book Shelf where we review any and all books related to The Chronicles of Narnia and CS Lewis! For today’s book we will be reviewing Tales Before Narnia, edited by Douglas Anderson.

Title: Tales Before Narnia

Author: Various

Edited by: Douglas A. Anderson

Publisher: Del Ray

ISBN -10: 0345498909

ISBN -13: 978-0345498908

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Sophia Perennis Publications has just brought back into print eight books by Owen Barfield, colleague of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, who has been acclaimed one of the most original minds of the 20th century; his Saving the Appearances remains a universally recognized classic. The titles newly available are:

The Rediscovery of Meaning and Other Essays
Romanticism Comes of Age
Speaker’s Meaning
Worlds Apart
History, Guilt and Habit
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis
Unancestral Voice
What Coleridge Thought

Owen Barfield, who died in 1997 in his hundredth year, was one of the most original minds of the twentieth century. T.S. Eliot wrote of his Saving the Appearances that it was “one of the few books which made me proud to be director of the firm which published them.” C.S. Lewis wrote that “he towers above us all,” describing Barfield as “the wisest of my unofficial advisers.” But his books have won respect from many writers other than Eliot and Lewis, among them J.R.R. Tolkien, John Lukacs, and Saul Bellow. His lifelong passion was the history of meaning, which he illumined from many sides, always against the backdrop of the evolution of consciousness (he wrote that “the full meanings of words are flashing, iridescent shapes like flames — ever-flickering vestiges of the slowly evolving consciousness beneath them”). He drew much inspiration from the works of the Austrian thinker Rudolf Steiner, and in his efforts to uncover the deeper significance of the Imagination as a faculty of knowledge within an evolutionary context, turned especially to the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who for him served as an exemplar of this faculty, as Goethe had done for Steiner. Barfield’s writings are full of life and insights well fit to inspire a new generation of thinkers.

Check out each of these new publications in our Amazon Store.

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From TheOneLion: I thought you’d be interested in a six week seminar taking place on Wheaton College campus in Wheaton, Illinois. It includes a visit to the Wade Center where CS Lewis’ desk and wardrobe are on display and JRR Tolkein’s desk is on display. Visitors can indeed touch the museum pieces, however they no longer allow visitors to climb into the wardrobe since it is a unique furniture piece and its age requires them to take certain steps to ensure its preservation. The Wade Center is an amazing little library/museum full of fantastic British authors works and some very interesting Tolkien original writings and other items related to The Lord of the Rings. The seminar is as follows and meets in the Rolland Center cafe – lower level. An as-of-now unscheduled trip to see the anticipated movie that we are all anticipating.

From Weaton.edu: The Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, Illinois, houses a major research collection of the books and papers of seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. These writers are well known for their impact on contemporary literature and Christian thought. Together they produced over four hundred books including novels, drama, poetry, fantasy, children’s books, and Christian treatises. Overall, the Wade Center has more than 11,000 volumes including first editions and critical works. Other holdings on the seven authors include letters, manuscripts, audio and video tapes, artwork, dissertations, periodicals, photographs, and related materials. Any of these resources may be studied in the quiet surroundings of the Kilby Reading Room.

In addition, the Wade Center has a museum where such pieces as C.S. Lewis’s family wardrobe and writing desk, Charles Williams’s bookcases, J.R.R. Tolkien’s desk, Pauline Baynes’s original map of Narnia, and a tapestry from Dorothy L. Sayers’s home can be viewed. Photographs, rare books and manuscripts, and other small items of memorabilia round off the displays. A current exhibit, entitled “The Craft of Detective Fiction”, details the contributions made by G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers to the genre of detective fiction.

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The website for the “‘Past Watchful Dragons’: Fantasy and Faith in the World of C.S. Lewis” conference to be held November 3-5, 2005 on the campus of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, USA (which will include The Nashville Symphony’s performance of Howard Shore’s The Lord of the Rings Symphony) has been thoroughly updated to include the specific details about the event. Online registration and ticket sales begin April 1, 2005. The Call for Papers remains open through May 1, 2005.

Belmont University invites scholars, students, church and community members to attend this exciting event featuring Doug Gresham (stepson of C.S. Lewis and Consultant to the film); Christopher Mitchell (Director of the Marion E. Wade Center and Assistant Professor of Theology, Wheaton College); Bruce Edwards (Noted Lewis Scholar, Associate Dean, and Professor of English at Bowling Green State University); David Payne (British actor and President of Rising Image Productions, specializing in dramatizations of the works of C.S. Lewis); and Glass Hammer (literary progressive rock band specializing in original music based on the writings of C.S. Lewis).

Inspired by the forthcoming Walden Media/Disney Film of the classic Narnia story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, this conference celebrates C.S. Lewis’s contribution to literature, theology, apologetics, scholarship, popular culture, myth, and imagination.

‘Past Watchful Dragons’ will also consider the work of the constellation of writers associated with Lewis such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Dorothy Sayers.

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Inspired by the forthcoming Walden Media/ Disney Film of the classic Narnia story The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, this conference celebrates C. S. Lewis’ contribution to literature, theology, apologetics, scholarship, popular culture, myth, and imagination.

‘Past Watchful Dragons’ will also consider the work of the constellation of writers associated with Lewis such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Dorothy Sayers.

Belmont University invites scholars, students, church and community members to attend this exciting event featuring Doug Gresham (stepson of C. S. Lewis and Consultant to the film); Christopher Mitchell (Director of the Marion E. Wade Center and Assistant Professor of Theology, Wheaton College); Bruce Edwards (Noted Lewis Scholar, Associate Dean, and Professor of English at Bowling Green State University); David Payne (British actor and President of Rising Image Productions, specializing in dramatizations of the works of C. S. Lewis); and Glass Hammer (literary progressive rock band specializing in original music based on the writings of C. S. Lewis).

Conference to be held November 3-5, 2005 on the campus of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.

Scholars working on C.S. Lewis and the Inklings are invited to present paper proposals on the following suggested topics:

1. Fantasy and Film: Lewis and The Inklings.
2. Archetypes in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
3. The Image of the Messiah and the Works of C. S. Lewis and the Inklings
4. Overcoming Evil with Good: The Theology of Lewis
5. Fairy Stories: Worlds of Imagination in the Writings of Lewis and Tolkien
6. Surprised by Words: ‘Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms’ and the Aesthetic Experience
7. Lewis and the Integration of Faith and Learning
8. The Appeal of C. S. Lewis: Exploring the Mystery

Papers on other topics considering the work of C. S. Lewis and suggested panel discussion topics are also welcomed. Please limit proposals to a 300 word abstract. Papers should be 20-25 minutes long.

All paper submissions due by May 1, 2005

Click here to submit a paper proposal

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