Why Eric? Fan since high school. Read all the books and biographies

of the major figures. Seen dozens of docs and biopics. Seen all the movie adaptations of

their works.

There is no set first meeting, it all came together gradually.

As Warren Lewis (CSL’s brother) wrote, "Properly speaking," wrote Warren Lewis, "the Inklings was neither a club nor a literary society, though it partook of the nature of both. There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections." There are no minutes, agendas, and few reminiscences. Humphrey Carpenter describes in his book The Inklings a

chapter of what a meeting might have been like, based on his interviews.

Influence today, on fantasy literature, music, games and, especially, film.

Met in Lewis’ rooms Thursday nights, or on Tuesday mornings, at the Eagle and Child. Affectionately know as the “Bird and Baby”. Plaque there for tourists.

Would read from works in progress, or have lively conversation on topics.

All male. Typical for the time and place.

Not all serious: Reading from Irene Iddlesleigh purple prose by Amanda McKittrick Ros, such a badly written

book, they held sporadic reading competitions, in which the winner was the member who could read from one of her novels for the longest without breaking into laughter. Mark Twain crowned her “Queen & Empress of the Hogwash Guild.”

E.G. “When on the eve of glory, whilst brooding over the prospects of a bright and happy future, whilst meditating upon the risky right of justice, there we remain, wanderers on the cloudy surface of mental woe, disappointment and danger, inhabitants of the grim sphere of anticipated imagery, partakers of the poisonous dregs of concocted injustice. Yet such is life.”

Influences: Norse Mythology Homer and Virgil Beowulf (esp. Tolkien) Medieval Romance stories Dante Milton Spencer (though Tolkien didn’t like

him as much as Lewis – “No harm in him: only needs a smack or so”)

George MacDonald’s fairy tales G.K. Chesterton William Morris

Major themes: Christianity as “Myth Become Fact”

– what’s important is the literal truth, but the idea that’s being conveyed, perhaps more true than history or reality.

Reason and Romanticism, the powers of both reason and the imagination. “Reason is the natural organ of truth, but imagination is the organ of meaning.” - Lewis

Language – connection to “the Word,” creation, magic, history

Voracious eclectic reading Liking of fantasy, fairy stories, not

just for children, Shakespeare’s fairies, diluted their power

Walking Journeys (LotR, Pilgrim’s Regress), Pilgrimmage – Lewis and brother would walk at a brisk pace, Tolkien, annoyingly, would stop at every interesting flower and tree (you can see the difference in their descriptions of the natural world in their fantasy stories).

The Divide between pre-modern and modern (age of the machine)

bigger than medieval and Renaissance or Enlightenment, pre-Christian, Christian and, since about 1830, the post-Christian. Tolkien especially despised the mechanization of war, deforestation to build roads and ugly buildings, factory smog, the “infernal” combustion engine and the atomic bomb. Technology and machinery were a way to harness power in this world at great cost, instead of subcreating in a secondary world, his approach.

Disdain for modernism, esp in poetry (Eliot, although Lewis would later befriend him – both working on the committee to revise the psalter for the Book of Common Prayer, ironically, Eliot arguing for a more traditional approach and

Lewis a more contemporary one). Some Inklings also befriended Auden and Yeats.

Mythology, esp a mythology for England. Monarchists, hierarchists, despite a wide variety of upbringings and religious beliefs.

Friendship, esp male friendship – troubled marriages, “Friendship to the Nth power,” Tolkien called it, Fellowship. “It is … easy to see why Authority frowns on Friendship. Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion… Hence if our masters … ever succeed in producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends, they will have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude.” C.S. Lewis, from The Four Loves –

where he would also say that Eros love is the love facing the lover and loving him or her, but friends both face the same thing and share a love for it.

Critique: they were never a mutual admiration society. Praise and condemnation flowed freely when merited.

Nicknames: “Jack” Lewis, Warren “Warnie” Lewis, J.R.R. “Tollers” Tolkien, etc.

Response to World Wars, most were in one or both (mostly worked in ‘20s – ‘50s) – come back in two weeks for a closer look

Most were failed poets Politically conservative, to the

point of being somewhat out of touch with the modern world and its politics, cloistered in Oxford.

Dislike for the psychological analysis of author’s lives to interpret their works (however, we will do some of that these next few weeks)

Minor figures: J.A.W. Bennett – another professor Lord David Cecil – writer of literary

biographies, JFK listed one of his as a favorite

Neville Coghill – a writer and producer of plays and screenplays, including a 1967 stage and then screen version of Dr. Faustus starring his young protégé Richard Burton and wife Elizabeth Taylor; also known for a stage and then television adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales

Jim Dundas-Grant – Navy Commander, not a writer

Hugo Dyson – another professor, instrumental in Lewis’ conversion (with Tolkien on Addison’s walk), later started acting and appeared in the Julie Christie classic Darling, but would often veto Tolkien reading from the LotR, “Oh God, not another fucking elf!”

Adam Fox – a chaplain, author of books about Plato and the Greek New Testament, among others

Colin Hardie – another professor Humphrey Havard – a doctor, not a

writer, the “UQ – Useless Quack” Donald MacKinnon Gervase Mathew – a Dominican

priest, published books on Byzantium and medieval history

R.B. McCallum – another professor

Tom Stevens – another professor Christopher Tolkien – J.R.R.’s son

and later publisher of dozens of books of his father’s

John Wain – not the actor – studied under Lewis, wrote novels, poetry and criticism

Charles Wrenn – another professor Many visitors, but never entered

the fold (E.R. Eddison was one, not a Christian, but perhaps one of the best writers of sci-fi of them all)

(Honorary) Dorothy Sayers –mystery novels, plays, translated Dante (after teaching herself Italian), and apologetics in The Mind of the Maker; but the Inklings was definitely a boys’ club, but had many female friends and fans.

Warren Lewis – “Warnie” Lewis’ older brother,

oconfirmed bachelor, oalcoholic, o6 books on 17th century France. oMajor in the Army and owas in evacuation from Dunkirk ocourtesy, unselfishness and

contributions as important as any of the others.

Major figures in the Inklings: C.S. Lewis J.R.R. Tolkien (next week) Charles Williams Owen Barfield (this week,

influenced the other two greatly)

Owen Barfield (1898-1997)

Called “one of the most neglected important thinkers of the 20th Century" Was raised in a secular home wholly devoted to music

In school, discovered an almost magical power of words

Had a stutter as a schoolboy, but it went away when he read poetry

Also was a gymnast and dancer – the rhythms of the body and poetic appeal of movement and sport.

Barfield proved to be C.S. Lewis’ “Second Friend,” a person who is almost your antithesis, loving the same things but getting totally

different things out of them. “He read all the right books, but has always got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language, but mispronounced it,” Lewis would say of him. The “First Friend” for Lewis was a man named Arthur Greeves, about whom more next week.

The “Great War” – Lewis was atheist, influenced by Freud and literary theory of the time, putting away childish interests, just as Barfield embraced anthroposophy.Side note: now there’s a course, 40 years old, at Harvard, called “The Question of God: Freud and Lewis”Took Lewis to task for his Chronological Snobbery – “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our age

and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”

THEMES

Thinking about thinking

Evolution of consciousness

“Mind” formed the brain, not the other way around

Collective Representations – What we all share – sunrises, roses, trees

Metaphor – more than simile, a window onto new meaning between two meanings, only apprehended by the imagination, not by reason

Original participation – oneness with the natural world. He thought that there used to be a unity of human consciousness, a concrete participation with the world, which over the ages has become fragmented with self-awareness and to which we can return in the future, while keeping our abstract consciousness, as we continue to evolve. The imagination is concrete rather than abstract, and all meaningful language is at least partly poetic. We recapture it at times in dreams, poetry and myth. Even scientific discourse is replete with metaphors, images and models.

“Final Participation” – an anticipation to rejoining “meaning” similar to Ricoeur’s “second naivite” which only applies to reading.

Anthroposophy – influenced by George Steiner, but thought it was compatible with Christianity, despite ideas like reincarnation. His wife couldn’t stand his preoccupation with it and he became an Anglican late in life, perhaps just to mollify her.

SLIDES

Was also a Coleridge scholar, best book probably Saving the Appearances, subtitled A Study in Idolatry, a mix of anthropology, history of science, and the sense impressions being the most important aspect of knowledge. but he was also the first to publish a fantasy novel: The Silver Trumpet,

which Lewis loved and gave to Tolkien, who also enjoyed it, but more importantly, his children would not let him return it!

A similar book, the influential Poetic Diction drew on these ideas as well. Dedicated to Lewis, Lewis would quote from it in seven of his scholarly books, and so often in class, his students thought it was a pen name for Lewis! For example, the single Greek word pneuma (which can be variously translated as "breath", "spirit", or "wind") reflects, Barfield argues, the primordial unity of these concepts of air, spirit, wind, and breath, all included in one "holophrase".

Language had a unique power to transform human consciousness –

almost magical, in the study of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats. And it captured changes that have occurred in this consciousness over time, as described in his book History in English Words. seeks to retell the history of Western civilization by exploring the change in meanings of various words. Quote: “We can only cope with the dangers of language if we recognize that language is by nature magical and therefore highly dangerous.” 

Eliot and Auden liked his literary books, Poetic Diction and History in English Words. Lewis thought him his equal, sometimes even his superior, dedicated his first major work of criticism, The Allegory of Love to him, “the wisest and best of my unofficial

teachers” and Poetic Diction is dedicated to Lewis. Lewis wrote Narnia’s first book for and named the main character after Barfield’s daughter, Lucy.

Also influenced Tolkien, who in a letter wrote, “the only philological remark (I think) in The Hobbit is...: an odd mythological way of referring to linguistic philosophy, and a point that will (happily) be missed by any who have not read Barfield (few have), and probably by those who have.” The passage in question is when Bilbo visits the dragon Smaug's treasure hoard within the Lonely Mountain: “To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the

language that they learned of elves in the days when all was wonderful. Bilbo had heard tell and sing of dragon-hoards before, but the splendour, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet come home to him. His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment..."

Lewis would later write to Barfield, “You might like to know that when Tolkien dined with me the other night he said, apropos of something quite different, that your conception of the ancient semantic unity had modified his whole outlook, and he was always just going to say something in a lecture when your concept stopped him in time. 'It is one of those things,' he said, 'that when you have once seen it there

are all sorts of things you never say again."

Side note: Was influential in a belligerent way late in life with the novelist Saul Bellow. Also admired by Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov.

Colorless years – he joined his father’s legal firm, but stopped writing almost entirely. Helped Lewis with taxes on royalties and set up a trust for him to give money charitably.

After a severe depression, the result of many factors, he somehow produced his best work in 1950, a novel called This Ever Diverse Pair, about a lawyer, like Barfield, who was a split personality, Burden, the serious solicitor, and Burgeon, the poet inside.

Worlds Apart 1963 – probably his most successful novel. It is a Socratic dialogue, a fictional conversation among eight people: a physicist, a biologist, a theologian, a philosopher, a psychiatrist, a teacher, a rocket scientist, and a lawyer. Energetic, wide-ranging and deeply penetrating, this brilliantly witty book points toward a solution to a major problem of our time, the gap between specializations. As the sheer bulk of human knowledge demands ever increasing specialization, Barfield asks, is man losing sight of the wholeness of life?

Last to die of the major Inklings.

Charles Williams (1886-1945)

C.S. Lewis compared his countenance to that of a monkey, but said when he spoke, his face became like that of an angel (male).

While a genius, his works are difficult: his themes are lofty, his thought process complicated, his use of symbolism complex, his expression obscure.

Supernatural thrillers, but set in the contemporary world (unlike Lewis and Tolkien). He also wrote plays, poetry, biographies, theology and lit crit.

T.S. Eliot, who most of the Inklings, especially Lewis, disliked intensely,

loved CW’s novels. “There are no novels anywhere quite like them,” he said. “He makes our everyday world much more exciting, because of the supernatural which he finds always active in it. He really believes in what he is talking about. And seeing all persons and all events in the light of the divine, he shows us a significance, in human beings, human emotions, human events, to which we had been blind.”

“The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse.” – so begins “War in Heaven”

1930: War in Heaven - contemporary setting to the traditional story of the Search for the Holy Grail. It surfaces in

an obscure country parish and becomes variously a sacramental object to protect or a vessel of power to exploit.

1930: Many Dimensions - The plot turns on the discovery of the magical Stone of Solomon, through which one can move at will through space, time, and thought. 

1931: The Place of the Lion – caused Lewis and Williams to meet, more in a minute on this one.

1932: The Greater Trumps – centers around the Tarot deck, which is used to unlock enormous metaphysical powers by allowing the possessors to see across space and time, create

matter, and raise powerful natural storms.

1933: Shadows of Ecstasy - A humanistic adept has discovered that by focusing his energies inward he can extend his life almost indefinitely. He undertakes an experiment using African lore to die and resurrect his own body thereby assuring his immortality. His followers begin a revolutionary movement to supplant European civilisation. The first of Williams's novels to be written, though not the first published. 1937: Descent into Hell – His best novel. human beings shut themselves up in their own narcissistic projections, so that they are no longer

able to love, to 'co-inhere.' The result is a veritable hell.

1945: All Hallows' Eve - All Hallows' Eve is the story of a man and woman whose love was so great it could bridge the gap of death. Only one that was read to the Inklings – my favorite.

The Place of the Lion dealt with Platonic Ideas coming to fruition in our world, vide the butterfly and the lion must have had some influence on Aslan in Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles. Quote: “I hope you still think that ideas are more dangerous than material thing," Quentin said. "That is what you were arguing at lunch."Anthony pondered while glancing from side to side before he answered, "Yes, I do. All material danger is

limited, whereas interior danger is unlimited. It's more dangerous for you to hate than kill, isn't it?”

Lewis would write to a friend about it, “It isn’t often now-a-days you get a Christian fantasy.” Lewis read the book and wrote Williams a letter of appreciation, who had just read Lewis’ first book, a work of literary criticism called The Allegory of Love in proofs at OUP and was in the process of writing Lewis!

THEMES

The City, modern settings – the City of London, like the City of God in Augustine – ideal order of man’s creation – most other Inklings liked the countryside

Co-inherence – we are connected spiritually, need to return to the premodern connection with the universe, the Trinity – three in one, likewise, we all take part in humanity and in the body of Christ. the ideal relationship between the individual parts of God's creation, including human beings. It is our mutual indwelling: Christ in us and we in Christ, interdependent. It is also the web of interrelationships, social and economic and ecological, by which the social fabric and the natural world function.

Concept of substitution, literally – of course, the Crucifixion was the ultimate example (Star Trek – the

Empath), bearing one another’s burdens, from Galatians.

Exchange is almost a monetary version of spirituality, where we donate time, money, energy, selves to others.

Interested in magic and the occult, one novel deals entirely with the Tarot cards, but more as symbols than as actual powerful items. Joined an occult group, the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross, founded by Waite of the Rider-Waite Tarot card deck, and rose highly in their ranks.

Oppositeness – looking at the darkness, seeing the other side of an argument. Although he decided on Christianity, he would say, “No one can

possibly do more than decide what to believe.”

Wrote many long, obscure poems on King Arthur, influencing Lewis’s third science fiction book. Some thought he would be remembered mostly for them in the future. Time will tell.

The poetry he wrote was extremely highly acclaimed, by Auden, Eliot and even Chesterton

Worked at Oxford U Press (brought Kierkegaard to the English world)

Famous story about Williams lecturing on Hamlet at Oxford to a packed room, while Tolkien, elsewhere in the building, lectured on Anglo Saxon to

one solitary student, who had to be there to take notes!

Wrote major works on Dante – still referred to today, The Figure of Beatrice – idea of Romantic Theology, through love, both sexual and romantic, we can see GodThe Way of Affirmation (vs the Way of Negation, Eliot). He treated Beatrice, Dante’s inspiration, as a flesh and blood figure and not just a symbol. Honorary Inkling Dorothy Sayers taught herself Italian and translated Dante’s Divine Comedy after reading it. Would recite poetry from memory, often loudly in public – his wife rebuked him and so he called her

Michal, after David’s wife who nagged him for dancing naked in public

History of the church, He Came Down From Heaven and The Descent of the Dove, a biography of the Holy Spirit, the latter of which was instrumental in the poet W.H. Auden’s conversion to Christianity and which he re-read annually.

Was a conflicted man, even tortured internally, always presenting a front, wearing a mask. Female students flocked to him and, while remaining chaste to his wife, took advantage of them, even sadistically. His followers were upset to read about these practices and it may be part of his undoing in history.

First of the Inklings to die. Lewis on Williams’ death: “We now verified for ourselves what so many bereaved people have reported; the ubiquitous presence of a dead man, as if he had ceased to meet us in particular places in order to meet us everywhere. It is not in the least like a haunting. It is not in the least like the bittersweet experiences of memory. It is vital and bracing; it is even, however the word may be misunderstood and derided, exciting…. So, at any rate, many of us felt it to be. No event has so corroborated my faith in the next world as Williams did simply by dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death that was changed.”