A Lecture And A Link ... And Don't Forget The Screwtape Letters On May 8th!

Peggy Printz just found out about an event at her church, it's on Sat. May 3 9-12AM; Dr. Art Lindsley, former president of the C. S. Lewis Institute, speaking on "Why Christianity over other religions" and The Problem of Evil.  seating is limited, reservations required, I think you pay at the door ($10)  - to register, go to www.epcelkton.org  - the website does not give much more info on the event, but there is helpful info such as the location of the church (it's on 33 between Elkton and Shenandoah).

Also Elizabeth Fierro found an interesting link you might want to know about which has a nice audio recording of a talk about C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams
Link to a lecture on C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams
http://www.hieropraxis.com/2013/02/charles-williams-and-c-s-lewis-the-influence-of-descent-into-hell/

May 8th Will Be The Screwtape Letters With Jessica Leading

The Screwtape Letters  is our book for May with Jessica leading.  Coming off Dante's Inferno which we just covered with Iain's excellent leadership we might see if we can detect any connections between the two works.  Of course since Screwtape is just writing letters to his nephew Wormwood the similarities may be subtle.  It should be a fun meeting.

Meanwhile look below for a schedule for the rest of the year.  We still need discussion leaders for August (C.S. Lewis On Stories and Other Essays On Literature) and for October (G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man).  If you'd like to lead one of those books let me know.

Schedule For The Balance of 2014 (May Through December) 

May 8th C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Jessica our Discussion Leader
June 12th James Stewart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey Ray our Discussion Leader.
July 10th J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle Jane will be our Discussion Leader.
August 14th C.S. Lewis  On Stories and Other Essays On Literature NEED Discussion Leader
September 11th Jane Austen Persuasion Stephen will be our Discussion Leader
October 9th G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man NEED Discussion Leader
November 13th C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Elizabeth our Discussion Leader. December 11th or some other date TBD Our Party to plan the New Year Stephen Has Volunteered to Host.

April 10th Is Dante's Inferno

  

A Few Thoughts and Questions from Iain For Our Meeting Thursday On The Inferno

Greetings. I  am not sure anything has been written about Dante's influence on Lewis, and I know that as a young student, Lewis admired the latter part of "Purgatoria"   - perhaps used in Perelandra.  I suspect that Paradiso provided backdrop for "The Great Divorce" although the progression is the reverse of the Inferno?

1. Who are Dante's guides? Why?
2. Can you identify Dante's major sources?
3. Identify the circles of  The Inferno?

4. Why the imagery of  _____  ice, fire?
5. Can you identify a Dantean usage (structure, Image, etc) in Lewis' works?

6. Why entitled "Divine Comedy?'
7. What is its purpose for Dante? For us as the readers?
8. Why a guide (Virgil and Beatrice?)
9. What is the significance of the overall structure of the Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise)?

10. What is written above the portals of the Inferno?
11. How are individual sins portrayed and also punished?
12. And the worst sin/s is/are?
13. Any themes, images, lessons drawn upon or used by Lewis  in the Science Fiction trilogy, Screwtape Letters, The great Divorce or in his overall conceptions of the world and humanity?

See you at the meeting at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes and Noble in Harrisonburg!  Or perhaps a bit earlier at Panera's for a quick dinner.

 

Our Book For April Will Be Dante's Inferno

Iain will be our discussion leader on Thursday April 10th when we will discuss the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy, the Inferno.  It will be fun to see some of the parallels with C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce.  Please join us if you can at the Barnes and Noble in Harrisonburg at 7:30 p.m.

Interested in who these people are in the Inferno?  You can check by clicking HERE a link that will take you to a Wiki-index of the characters in Dante's Inferno.

SCHEDULE

April 10th Dante The Inferno Iain our Discussion Leader
May 8th C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Jessica our Discussion Leader
June 12th James Stewart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey Ray our Discussion Leader.
July 10th J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle Jane will be our Discussion Leader.
August 14th C.S. Lewis  On Stories and Other Essays On Literature NEED Discussion Leader
September 11th Jane Austen Persuasion Stephen will be our Discussion Leader
October 9th G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man NEED Discussion Leader
November 13th C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Elizabeth our Discussion Leader. December 11th or some other date TBD Our Party to plan the New Year Stephen Has Volunteered to Host.

Posted by Ray Schneider at 3:27 PM No comments:

March 13th We Discuss Virgil's Aeneid With Stephen Leading

The questions for this Thursday's C.S. Lewis Society of Harrisonburg's meeting are focused on Virgil's Aeneid and the discussion will be led by Stephen. 

Discussion Questions:

1. Why do we still read the Aeneid?
2. How does it reflect the human condition?
3. What values does the Aeneid espouse?
4. What is Virgil’s view of the divine?
5. How does Virgil depict the underworld?
6. Why might the Aeneid have appealed to an educated man born in the Victorian era, such as Lewis?
7. How are the values expressed in the Aeneid complementary to Christian values?
8. How are the values expressed in the Aeneid incompatible with Christian values?
9. Does the Aeneid influence Lewis’ own storytelling?
10. What have the first six books of the Aeneid taught us?
    
    
     
    I: Background:
    P. Vergilius Maro (70-19 BC) was perhaps the most famous of Roman poets in a great age for poetry.¹ He lived during the violent and turbulent period of transition from the Roman Republic (an aristocratic oligarchy) to the Empire (a mostly absolutist monarchy). His family was of middling rank from Mantua in N. Italy. They may have lost lands to confiscation during the civil war of the 40s BC. He published the Eclogues (idealised, bucolic lyric poetry) in 39-38 BC and the Georgics (a poetic farming manual) in 29 BC before spending the rest of his life on his epic poem, the Aeneid. The work was unfinished at his death and tradition records that he desired the work to be destroyed. It was not. 
     
    Virgil became a protégé of Maecenas, the right-hand man and cultural adviser of the emperor, Augustus. As such, he received patronage in return for his part in advancing the regime’s literary and cultural agenda. Augustus, having won the last civil war against M. Antonius and Cleopatra VII at the battle of Actium in 31 BC, sought to cement his hold on the Roman state and to portray his rule as the return of a golden age of peace and prosperity. He affected to have restored the Republic in 27 BC while in fact arrogating considerable unconstitutional powers to himself under traditional sounding names. Augustus sought to legislate to tighten Roman morals and to revive traditional religious cults, some of which had fallen into abeyance during the late Republic.
    
    
    The background to the story of Virgil’s Aeneid was the mythical Trojan War (traditionally dated to the early 12^th century BC) between the Greeks and the Trojans of NW Anatolia (Turkey). After an epic ten year war, Troy was destroyed. King Priam was slain and most of the population enslaved, but some escaped to found new settlements. Among these was Aeneas, the son of the goddess Venus (goddess of love) and founder of the Julian clan whose most famous descendants were Julius Caesar and his nephew, Augustus. Homer, the Greek epic poet who wrote the Iliad and Odyssey, was a strong influence on Virgil. Virgil himself had a profound literary influence from his own day through the Middle Ages (he was a sympathetic guide in Dante’s Inferno) and on to modern times. C.S. Lewis admired the work greatly, having been exposed to it early through his classical education.
    
    
    1 The Golden Age of Latin literature extended from the early first century BC to the early first century AD, essentially the late Republic and the reign of the first emperor, Augustus (30 BC – AD 14). Its leading poets were Lucretius, Catullus, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Horace and Virgil. The leading prose writers were Cicero, Caesar and the historian, Livy.

    
    SCHEDULE
    
    April 10th Dante The Inferno Iain our Discussion Leader
    May 8th C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Jessica our Discussion Leader
    June 12th James Stewart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey Ray our Discussion Leader
    July 10th J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle NEED Discussion Leader
    August 14th C.S. Lewis  On Stories and Other Essays On Literature NEED Discussion Leader
    September 11th Jane Austen Persuasion Stephen will be our Discussion Leader
    October 9th G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man NEED Discussion Leader
    November 13th C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold NEED Discussion Leader
    December 11th or some other date TBD Our Party to plan the New Year Stephen Has Volunteered to Host.

February Meeting Cancelled Due To Snow

Schedule Moving Forward
The snow covers the land from Lantern Waste near SpareOom to the distant realms of Woodstock and Harrisonburg and so at Cair Paravel the kings and queens of Narnia from of old have decreed that there will be no meeting lest the White Witch imagine she can return.  Spring is coming, Aslan assures us.

March 13th Virgil The Aeneid (Books 1 to 12) Stephen our Discussion Leader
April 10th Dante The Inferno Iain our Discussion Leader
May 8th C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters Jessica our Discussion Leader
June 12th James Stewart Bell and Anthony P. Dawson From the Library of C.S. Lewis: Selections from Writers Who Influenced His Spiritual Journey Ray our Discussion Leader
July 10th J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy Stories and Leaf by Niggle NEED Discussion Leader
August 14th C.S. Lewis  On Stories and Other Essays On Literature NEED Discussion Leader
September 11th Jane Austen Persuasion Stephen will be our Discussion Leader
October 9th G.K. Chesterton The Everlasting Man NEED Discussion Leader
November 13th C.S. Lewis Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold NEED Discussion Leader
December 11th or some other date TBD Our Party to plan the New Year Stephen Has Volunteered to Host.

 

February 13th We'll Do The First Half Of The Aeneid

February 13th Virgil The Aeneid (Books 1 to 6) 
This important epic was a significant influence on C.S. Lewis and Lewis himself undertook a translation which while incomplete was recently published (see http://tinyurl.com/mfkcypl ). Stephen will be our discussion leader and recommended the Fitzgerald translation. There are many translations out there and often they are available for free from ebooks or Barnes and Noble or Amazon.