The Dauntless Don: How C. S. Lewis Became a Public Intellectual, 1938-1944

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Published: Jun 30, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/lincu-2024-1-0366
Keywords:
C. S. Lewis the Inklings World War II Public Intellectual Mere Christianity The Abolition of Man the BBC relativism/emotivism the Age of Disenchantment and Anxiety

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Paul E. Michelson
Huntington University, Indiana, U.S.A.

Abstract

The paper argues that part of C. S. Lewis’s perennial success owes to his persona as a Public Intellectual. It is therefore useful and instructive to trace the steps in the evolution that led him from literary historian and Oxford professor to Public Intellectual, a process that took place between 1938 and 1944 during the dire days of World War II.


 

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Michelson, P. E. . “The Dauntless Don: How C. S. Lewis Became a Public Intellectual, 1938-1944”. Linguaculture, vol. 15, no. 1, June 2024, pp. 13-36, doi:10.47743/lincu-2024-1-0366.
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Vol. 15 No. 1 (2024): C. S. Lewis – The Re-enchanted Academic
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Paul E. Michelson, Huntington University, Indiana, U.S.A.

Dr. Paul E. MICHELSON is a Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at Huntington University, where he began teaching in 1974. He has been three times a Fulbright fellow in Romania (1971-1973, 1982-1983, 1989-1990); he holds the Ph.D. from Indiana University. His areas of interest and expertise include historiography, Romanian history in the 19th-21st centuries, Totalitarian and Post-totalitarian societies, the History of Venice, and the work of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.

He served as secretary of the Society for Romanian Studies for nearly 40 years and was secretary of the Conference on Faith and History for ten. His book, Romanian Politics, 1859-1871: From Prince Cuza to Prince Carol (1998) was selected by CHOICE MAGAZINE as an Outstanding Academic Book for 1998 and was awarded the 2000 Bălcescu Prize for History by the Romanian Academy. Recent publications include "’To Promote Professional Study, Criticism, and Research on All Aspects of Romanian Culture and Civilization’: The Society for Romanian Studies at Forty," Balkanistica, Vol. 29 (2016); “Romania and World War I, 1914-1918: An Introductory Survey,” Revue Roumaine d’Histoire, Vol. 55 (2016); "George Enescu in Wartime Iași, 1916-1919," Anuarul Institutului de Istorie A. D. Xenopol, Vol. 53 (2016); "C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Esemplastic Friendship," Inklings Forever, Vol. 10 (2017); "The History of Romanian Evangelicals, 1918-1989: A Bibliographical Excursus," Arhiva Moldaviae, Vol. 9 (2017); "Inklings at war. J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and the Crucible of World War I," Christian History, Nr. 121 (March 2017); and "Greater Romania and the Post-World War New Normal," in Victor Voicu, ed., Lucrările conferinței internaționale România și evenimentele istorice din perioadă 1914-1920. Desăvârșirea Marii Uniri și întregirea României (București: Editura Academiei Română, 2018). He recently delivered keynote addresses at the Romanian Academy's 1918 commemoration in September 2018 and at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj 1918 conference in October 2018. He is currently finishing a history of Romanian historiography, 1880-1940, and continues to work on a history of the Romanian 1848.

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