“I chose to write this book because I felt that most studies of Lewis missed the point,” Joeckel said. Photo courtesy of Samuel Joeckel
In his newly released book “The C.S. Lewis Phenomenon: Christianity and the Public Sphere,” associate professor of English Samuel Joeckel presents a new take on the life and teachings of Lewis.
“I chose to write this book because I felt that most studies of Lewis missed the point,” Joeckel said of the May release. “They tended to paraphrase Lewis or praise him as a saint or they tended to reprise the same talking points and recapitulate the same sorts of arguments.”
“The book offers a new way to understand Lewis’s accomplishment as well as the cultural phenomenon he left in his wake,” added Joeckel who describes the book as part literary analysis, part intellectual history, and part meta-criticism, which is criticism of criticism.
Joeckel prompted to write this book because he liked to read Lewis books since he was a child.
“I felt like the time had come for me to try to say something meaningful about him and his popularity,” Joeckel said. “Beyond that, I suppose I was inspired to write a book because that is what scholars are supposed to do.”
Writing all 444 pages of the book took time away from Joeckel’s everyday activities. He began writing the book in 2010 and said that finding the time to write the book was the most difficult part.
Joeckel, who also teaches in the Supper Honors Program, said that PBA professors have heavy teaching loads, which makes research scholarship a challenge.
“Thankfully, I was awarded a sabbatical and a one course-load reduction to work on the project,” Joeckel said. “Without those, I probably would still be working on the book.”
The book explores Lewis’s identity as a public intellectual, showing how the conventions of the public sphere shaped not only his own writings, but books and articles about him.
By writing the book, Joeckel wanted to explore different facets of C.S. Lewis’s phenomenon. One of the tfacets is Lewis’s accomplishments as a public intellectual.
“The result is that Lewis had been deposited in a scholarly cul-de-sac,” Joeckel said. “Devotees praise his every word; detractors pounce mercilessly: There seems to be only one way in and one way out.”
Joeckel attempted to open up the field, to chart a new course in Lewis studies.
“Once I began thinking about Lewis as a public intellectual—what it means to be a public intellectual and how one carries out that work—a new direction revealed itself to me,” he said.
Joeckel’s book (published by Mercer University Press) can be found on Amazon.com as well as other online booksellers.
VICTORIA VARTAN 