C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner

On the fiftieth anniversary of his death, C.S. Lewis was commemorated in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, taking his place beside the greatest names in English literature. Oxford and Cambridge Universities, where Lewis taught, also held celebrations of his life. This volume gathers together addresses from those events into a single anthology. Rowan Williams and Alister McGrath assess Lewis’s legacy in theology, Malcolm Guite addresses his integration of reason and imagination, William Lane Craig takes a philosophical perspective, while Lewis’s successor as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English, Helen Cooper, considers him as a critic. Others contribute their more personal and creative responses: Walter Hooper, Lewis’s biographer, recalls their first meeting; there are poems, essays, a panel discussion, and even a report by the famous “Mystery Worshipper” from the Ship of Fools website, along with a moving recollection by Royal Wedding composer Paul Mealor about how he set one of Lewis’s poems to music. Containing theology, literary criticism, poetry, memoir, and much else, this volume reflects the breadth of Lewis’s interests and the astonishing variety of his own output: a diverse and colourful commemoration of an extraordinary man.
Table of Contents
Foreword—Vernon White
Preface—Peter S. Williams
Introduction—Michael Ward
Part One—Symposium at St. Margaret’s, Westminster
1. Alister McGrath—Telling the Truth through Rational Argument
2. Malcolm Guite—Telling the Truth through Imaginative Fiction
3. Panel Discussion—What Can Twenty-First Century Apologetics Learn from C. S. Lewis?
Part Two—Memorial Service at Westminster Abbey
4. Order of Service—including the Address by Rowan Williams
Part Three—Reflections on the Westminster Commemorations
5. Paul Mealor—Reflections on Composing Love’s As Warm As Tears
6. Acton Bell—Mystery Worshipper: Westminster Abbey
7. Jeanette Sears—C. S. Lewis’s Memorial Service
8. Holly Ordway—Stonecrop: Lewis Takes His Place in Poets’ Corner
9. Sarah Clarkson—The Best Tale Lewis Ever Told
Part Four—Cambridge Conference
10. Rowan Williams—Rhetoric, Doctrine, and the Ethics of Language: C. S. Lewis on Paradise Lost
11. Ad Putter—C. S. Lewis on Allegory
12. Helen Cooper—C. S. Lewis as Medievalist
13. Malcolm Guite—The Abolition of Man: From Literary Criticism to Prophetic Resistance
14. Stephen Logan—The Soul of C. S. Lewis
15. Stephen Prickett—“It Makes No Difference”: Lewis’s Criticism, Fiction and Theology
Part Five—Oxford Addresses
16. William Lane Craig—God and the Platonic Host
17. Walter Hooper—Remembering C. S. Lewis
Recommended Resources
Bibliography
Index