The Hansen Lectureship Series

Review: The Last Romantic

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Cover image of "The Last Romantic" by Jeffrey W. Barbeau

The Last Romantic (Hansen Lectureship Series), Jeffrey W. Barbeau with contributions from Sarah Borden, Matthew Lundin, and Keith L. Johnson. IVP Academic (ISBN: 9781514010518) 2025.

Summary: The influence of Romanticism on C.S. Lewis in terms of imagination, subjectivity, memory and identity, and the sacraments.

As a young Christian, the logical arguments of Mere Christianity were helpful in confirming me in my own Christian conviction. They also served as a source of “reasons to believe” that i could share with my friends. So I went on to read other works by Lewis including the Chronicles of Narnia and the Space Trilogy. These works captured my imagination and evoked both fear and love for the Lion who was on the move. Then I read Surprised by Joy, and how joy served as a signpost for Lewis in his journey to faith.

Jeffrey W. Barbeau helps me understand the subjective experience and Christian imagination I found in Lewis and its connection to the objective, logical arguments Lewis made for the Christian faith. What Barbeau develops in this book, a transcript of three Hansen Lectures, is the influence of nineteenth century Romantics on the thought of C.S. Lewis. He begins, though, with a debate during 1967 at his own institution, Wheaton College. Was Lewis’s thought infused with “the Romantic heresy”? The principles were Clyde Kilby, who obtained Lewis’s papers for Wheaton and introduced many in this country to Lewis, and Morris Inch, who took Lewis’s subjectivity to task.

Studying the marginalia in Lewis’s books, Barbeau traces interaction with Schleiermacher, Hegel, Marx, and Kant. He also shows the profound influence of Wordsworth, and especially Coleridge upon Lewis. While Lewis recognized that subjectivity could mislead, it could also evoke and mirror objective reality and point toward it. He shows how often in Lewis’s work, he begins with the personal to point toward the general, objective truth.

In the second lecture, Barbeau turns to what he calls “the anxiety of memory.” He observes that Lewis, in Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed, draws on nineteenth century spiritual biography. He parallel’s Lewis to Sarah Eliza Congdon or Elmira, New York and the Journal she kept of her spiritual journey. Lewis didn’t know of Congdon but possessed a copy of John Wesley’s Journal. Again, for Lewis, Wordsworth and Coleridge released him from concerns about the “suffocatingly subjective” character of his own experience. Rather, Coleridge’s ability to connect spiritual intuition with objective theological truth was critical in the lead-up to Lewis’s conversion.

Finally, the third lecture focuses on how Romanticism influenced Lewis use of symbol. He unpacks Lewis’s view of nature, imagination, and of experiences of God. Barbeau shows how Lewis differed with figures like Nietzsche and Emerson, distinguishing nature’s power from nature worship. It is actually in the commonplaces of food and drink, and with our neighbors that we may most deeply encounter God, as in the bread and cup of the sacrament.

A distinctive contribution of Barbeau’s scholarship is his study not only of Lewis’s works but of his library. Lewis’s marginalia points to what he was thinking as he read philosophy, theology, and the works of the Romantics. Not only that, Barbeau retrieves Romanticism from the dustbin of evangelical thought as he elucidates the influence of figures like Coleridge on Lewis. It turns out the personal, the subjective, and the imagination may well point us to objective truth. Both cannot help but be inextricably involved in the Christian journey.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

C. S. Lewis in America

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C. S. Lewis in America, Mark A. Noll with Karen J. Johnson, Kirk D. Farney, and Amy E. Black. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: An analysis of how C. S. Lewis’s works were received in the United States, considering Catholic, secular, and Protestant/evangelical critics evaluating his work between 1935 and 1947.

Even before the widespread interest in C.S. Lewis due to the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis was being read in both religious and secular circles in the United States from the mid-1930’s and through the 1940’s. In this latest in the Hansen Lectureship Series at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, American historian Mark A. Noll offers three lectures that analyzed the critical reception and growing interest in Lewis’s works of scholarship, fiction, and theology. Successively, he explores the reception Lewis received among Catholics, in the secular and mainstream media, and among both mainline Protestants and evangelicals, who were late but eventually enthusiastic adopters.

It came as a delightful surprise that Catholics in the U.S. were among his earliest and most appreciative readers. In part, Noll believes that Lewis was a fresh, yet for the most part, orthodox voice that offered a friendly path out of a certain stagnant isolation, reflecting the undercurrent of change developing in the church. Responses ranged from the early and effusive praise of The Pilgrim’s Regress by Fr. Conway, CSP in Catholic World to Philip Donnelly’s criticism of Lewis’s account of “adoptive sonship” in Beyond Personality (later part of Mere Christianity). Other critics had concerns about his doctrine of the church and his ideas about natural law put forth in The Abolition of Man. The high watermark of criticism came from Charles Brady of Canisius College, who read everything Lewis wrote, understood him as well as anyone in this era, and wrote two glowing essays for America that are reprinted at the end of this work.

With regard to secular critics, Noll considers in succession Lewis’s scholarly and imaginative works, and finally his works of Christian exposition. Lewis drew general praise for both The Allegory of Love and for his Preface to Paradise Lost. A number affirmed his argument against E. M. W. Tillyard in The Personal Heresy that in criticism of a poet’s work, the focus should be on the subject matter of the poem and not the poet. Regarding the imaginative works, Noll describes the public as responding “ecstatically.” Noll highlight’s W.H. Auden’s review of The Great Divorce in The Saturday Review combining general praise with fine-grained critique. The widest range of critical opinion was reserved for his works of Christian exposition, from the long-searching response of Charles Hartshorne to a review in the New York Herald Tribune from a young Beloit College professor, Chad Walsh, who would quickly become know as a leading exponent of his work.

Apart from a patronizing review in The Christian Century, Protestants joined their secular counterparts in their warm reception of Lewis. Substantial interest among evangelicals in Lewis first came from conservative Presbyterians in the Westminster seminary circle as well as the first substantive criticism, particularly from a young Edmund Clowney. Wheaton’s Clyde Kilby represented a much more positive response to Lewis as did Wheaton student Elizabeth Howard (Eliot). Kilby’s work led to the donation of Lewis’s letters to Wheaton, forming the core of what would become the Wade Center collection. InterVarsity’s His Magazine also contributed to the growing awareness of Lewis in evangelical circles when it published a lengthy excerpt from The Case For Christianity.

Noll concludes the work in considering Lewis in today’s much more fragmented setting and what might be learned from Lewis’s greater concern for the state of his soul as a writer than the success of his work. The work also includes responses to each lecture. I found most interesting in these Kirk Farney’s discussion of two American contemporaries of Lewis who were also intelligent spokespersons for Christianity: Walter A. Maier of The Lutheran Hour and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen of The Catholic Hour. and the wide interest from people outside the church they enjoyed, as did Lewis. I can’t help wonder if there remains a space for such folk today. I’m thinking for example of the broad impact of the late Timothy Keller and the younger voices like Esau McCaulley and writers like Tish Harrison Warren.

Noll offers an excellent resource (aided by his wife) chronicling the early reviews of Lewis’s work, which I’ve only highlighted here. I’m struck that Catholics were early adopters and evangelicals relative latecomers. I’m impressed with the theological and scholarly sophistication of the writers and the elegant style of reviewers like Brady. How different things are in the BookTok era! This is a great resource for Lewis scholars and fans and a marvelous addition to the Hansen Lectureship series on the seven authors in the Wade Collection.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Wonders of Creation

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The Wonders of Creation: Learning Stewardship from Narnia and Middle-Earth (The Hansen Lectureship Series), Kristen Page, with contributions from Christina Bieber Lake, Noah J. Toly, and Emily Hunter McGowin. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2022.

Summary: Discusses the value of Lewis’s and Tolkien’s fictional landscapes in fostering love and care for the creation of which we are part.

I think it may safely be said that those of us who love the stories of Narnia and Middle-Earth love not only the stories but the places in which they occur. We imagine finding wardrobes leading into a forest with a lamppost or staying with the elves in Lothlorien. We delight in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Beaver and take deep offense at the industrialization of the Shire and the assault on Fangorn Forest.

Kristen Page, a professor of biology and lifelong lover of these stories believes these stories have a power in them to encourage us to care for the creation we live in and not just the imagined ones of Narnia or Middle-Earth. She sets out her case in three chapters, reflecting the three lectures she gave as part of The Hansen Lectureship Series at The Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College. She is joined in this volume by Christina Bieber Lake, Noah J. Toly, and Emily Hunter McGowin who each offer a short response to one of her chapters.

In the first chapter, “Stepping Out of the Wardrobe,” Page shares her twin loves of reading about fictional landscapes and reading actual landscapes, something she teaches her students to do. She proposes that the fictional landscapes of Lewis and Tolkien, particularly forests, reflect the careful observation both men made of actual forests, particularly in the detailed descriptions of fictional places they offer in their books. She sees the connection going both ways. Treebeard’s outrage with what Saruman has done to trees he knew by name can translate to our own outrage at human depredations of our forests and land. She decries the plant blindness of many of our children, the removal of plant vocabulary from children’s dictionaries to make room for tech terms, and believes books like those of Lewis and Tolkien’s are one step in restoring plant literacy and the love of growing things. She also sees the hobbits care for the Shire as a model of sustainable practices.

The second chapter, “A Lament for the Creation,” begins with the scouring of the Shire when the hobbits return. Men from the south have turned it into an industrial wasteland, impoverishing its once flourishing inhabitants. The hobbits give themselves to setting things right. She then turns to our own ravaged ecosystems, oceans, rivers, the atmosphere and considers how stories may awaken us to action. She begins with our over-consumption, where we tax the capacity of the earth to restore itself and the industry created brownfields, often adjacent to the urban poor, whose health is impacted by their proximity. She also brings in her own research on how the destruction of habitats increase the threat of novel viruses and diseases as humans and animal species are brought into closer contact. Cocoa plantation spread in Africa, for example, correlates with the increased incidence of Ebola. She quotes an extended passage in Perelandra in which Ransom refuses to partake of a uniquely delicious fruit more than would sustain him, sensing this would not be right, suggesting that we might develop a similar sense. She proposes that lament, both for the creation and the harms that our excesses have caused our neighbors may lead to change, just as Fangorn’s lament in the company of the hobbits led to the resolve to act.

The third chapter, “Ask the Animals to Teach You,” is about regaining wonder. Whether it is the wonder of talking animals including the lordly Aslan, or the beauty of Lothlorien, reading these works fosters wonder for Page, as do her studies of animals, and of plant life. Tom Bombadil teaches us to take delight in things for themselves without reference to ourselves. Tolkien understood that trees communicate, which scientists are discovering to be the case. Wonder leads us to love the physical creation and give ourselves to care for and tend it.

Page’s presentations are accompanied by a center section of a selection of her exquisite nature photography. The responses by Lake, Toly, and McGowin are brief, adding their own disciplinary insights and personal experiences. I’ve appreciated all the Hansen Lectureship books that I’ve read, but this was a special treat. Most have featured humanities professors, who understandably bring their discipline’s critical skills to bear in their discussion of the Wade authors. This was so delightful as a scientist who is a devoted reader of Lewis and Tolkien, but not a scholar in their works, connected her scientific scholarship to the worlds and landscapes Lewis and Tolkien create and that readers love, and how this may open our eyes to our own world. May we read and love and care for those landscapes as deeply as is fitting of true lovers of Narnia and Middle-Earth!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.