Engaging Literature with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien

And my two guests are Tim Basselin and Hall Harris, who are partners in crime this semester. They have combined to teach a course on the fictional writings of Tolkien and Lewis. And Tim teaches in our Arts – Media and Arts Program here at the Seminary, and Hall is a colleague in New Testament Studies.

And so, how could it possibly be that a New Testament guy and an arts guy get together and teach a class on literary works? And, Tim, I think I'll let you launch us into the – tell the story about where this came from.

And I really read pretty freely. And I really enjoyed it, because I didn't have anybody telling me, "You should like Dickens," or, "You shouldn't like Trollope," or, "You –" whatever.

But I went away to college. I thought I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. I decided to come to Seminary. And so, my fourth year, I switched to an English lit. major and finished with a degree in English lit. and a minor in French. But I have been reading Lewis and Tolkien since that time. And over and over and over again.

I used to read the Space Trilogy and The Lord of the Rings annually. I've slipped a little on that in the last ten years.

So, explain, for those who are listening, as they – thinking through this – why in the world would a seminary be engaged in a course on literary fiction? What is it designed to do for students? And what kind of reflection are you aiming at?

So, it feels to me very natural and like, "Why wouldn't you have this sort of course?" But what I find from students is that in a similar way to the way I feel like my imagination was awakened with some of this – these types of readings when I was young, that students are longing for that.

So, in one way, it allows or teaches people how to allow their imagination to be part of their spiritual life would be one aspect of it. And then I think another one is understanding our culture, understanding how to interact with culture very generally, not just through analysis or reason, but also with the emotions, with viewing art, with seeing movies, and actually being affected by them, which is something Lewis talks about a lot.

What's your view on it, Hall, why the school needs this kind of course?

And I always used to use Lewis' imaginary works and Tolkien's fictional worlds as an example of things that were worth thinking about. And one of the – I really became convinced – and I still am, though I've had to broaden my views out, thanks to my colleague – that this actually applies, perhaps, to all literature and not just the fictional works of Christian authors like Lewis and Tolkien.

But I really feel like, when you go into this fictional reality that they've created, you see moral and ethical choices in relief in a way that they stand out and jump at you in ways that in all of our complex modern world, with all it's different shades of gray and uncertainty, we don't see the clarity or the difference between good and evil, for example.

And when you go into Lord of the Rings, or when you go into Narnia, or when you go to Mars – Malacandra – with Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet, you suddenly see stuff for what it really is. And when you watch other people in the – when you watch the characters making choices between good and evil, whose side am I on? Who am I willing to die for?

You come away from that and back into our real world with an enhanced capability to make those discernments, those choices. And so, you come away a more ethical, better person as a result.

Now, I've since come to think, thanks to Tim, that this actually applies in some greater or lesser degree to virtually all of literature in the sense that literature forces us outside of ourself. And even in literature that we might look at and consider morally questionable or in some cases even morally reprehensible, we actually learn something by negative example about how not to do this.

And the goal is really to get to know them. And to get to know them in a way that's healthy and that allows you to have and wrestle with, "Where can I connect with where this person's coming from," that kind of thing.

And I think it's an undervalued value, if I can. And I heard you evoke the idea of imagination. So, I think this is an interesting combination. So, talk a little bit about the goal of opening up the imagination that you feel like these works do.

Do you think they work, in part, because not only do they take you out of yourself, but in some cases they put you in a different place, a different location, and you find yourself trying to get oriented to start off with? And in that process – in the process of being dislocated, you actually have the opportunity to get located, if I can say it that way?

The Old Testament actually doesn't use the word "beauty" very much at all. It uses the word "glory" a lot. And in referring to things that we might call beautiful. And Bill Dyrness has done some good work. He was on my dissertation committee. He's done some really incredible work on looking at beauty in the Old Testament and talking – when he talks about beauty, the way he defines it is – the way he says the Bible defines it is beauty is that which is fitting.

So, it is that which is in correct relation to God's purposes in the world. So, it's not this objective – it's objective in the sense that it is true, and it's objectively true –

And I think talking about the imagination, what literature can do for us, is it can re-imagine what is beautiful. It can take our understandings that may have holes and flaws in them, and it can give us a different perspective that we see as more fitting into God's purposes in the world, that we couldn't see from where we were at from our original perspective.

I think of some of the movies that are very, very popular today, which are about – the Mockingjay movies in particular – where the game – the reality show is so out of whack, if I can say it that way, that you're forced – you're forced to think through, "What kind of a – what kind of a moral world is that?" And then, "What kind of a moral world should we think about living in?"

And then, of course, part of the point of the movie is the way in which a virtue shines through even in the midst of that kind of disorienting environment, if I can say it that way. Is that part of what we're looking at here is this kind of reshuffling of the deck, if you will, or something like that?

And that is that when you look at beauty, there's inner beauty, and there's external beauty. And we often focus only on the latter. We focus on what we can see with our eyes and what meets our senses. But there's an inner beauty of character that somebody can exhibit, as a human being, who might actually, on the outside, be a disabled person, a disfigured person, even a very grotesque person, but there's this inner radiance of character that comes through.

You know, the quote I always keep going back to is one from – one of the most famous aviation writers of the 20th century, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who's famous for The Little Prince. It's been translated in – all over, "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly the essential is invisible to the eye." And that really says a lot. And you may want to comment on this inner vs. outer, 'cause I know it concerns some of your dissertation work.

That in other words – that the external situation that we find ourselves in may be terrifically horrible, in many ways, and yet the person who stands out in the midst of that stands out in part because the contrast then becomes so great.

So, some disabilities, like we're all wearing glasses here. And people don't necessarily find glasses ugly. I have some teenaged kids that are kind of interested in getting glasses that are not even for use. You know? It's just a cool factor.

But it's not an easy work to get into, and it – I had problems with it that were pretty much my own making, because I tend to be a little bit of an engineer by trade, and I tend to like to look at life as an engineering problem to be solved. And there is a character in Till We Have Faces who takes a very similar approach to life, and I didn't like that character very much, because it was too close to home let's just say.

So, let's talk about which works dispose themselves to this discussion first, Hall, and then talk about what kinds of things are you getting the students to reflect on as they read?

This week we're talking about Lewis' work on experiment and criticism, which is perhaps, in some ways, maybe one of the more technical things we do, where Lewis is arguing that rather than have people told what they should or shouldn't like, they should learn how to read and really engage the literature and immerse themselves in it and learn how to receive rather than to simply comment on.

And so, it's really important. We're gonna move on from that to talk about Tolkien's – it was originally the Andrew Lang lectures – and then published as On Fairy Stories, where Tolkien talks about creating imaginary worlds and our role as human beings as sub-creators under God the Creator, where we use our imaginative, inventive capability to come up with these imaginary worlds that people can visit.

And he talks about people who don't read well. One example is they don't read things twice, because as soon as they figure out they've read it before, they're done with it. They've used it. It's already had its purpose. And he talks about reading well. I mean imagine going to a family reunion and then you're invited back the next year, or five years down the road or whatever, and, "No, I've done that before. I'm finished with it." Right?

So, again, it's about listening well and not simply using what we read for our own purposes and then tossing it and being done with it.

And I'm gonna read one stanza of a poem I wrote this weekend that describes my own experience about this, because I think it says it better than I can say it any other way. The poem was called Literary Immersion, and this is the first stanza:

Sinking in a sea of words,

down in the darkened depths of a literary sea,

I plunge beneath the surface meaning,

gasping as I go, choking for air, fighting for light, longing for life itself,

Within existing memory or no, dying to myself

as I lose myself in words I neither spoke nor wrote.

And yet, in dying I am altered, changed within, enlarged, made greater than I was before.

It reminds me of Strabo, the geographer, commenting on the ancient city of Corinth, once said, "Not for everyone is the voyage to Corinth."

Let me see if I can put this in a different way. I think there's certainly danger in literature. But for me, the real danger is when we read it as escapism. Because literature does work on us. It simply does. And when you read it as escapism, you don't recognize it as doing work on you.

I think there's a deeper way of learning how to engage cultural objects, how to engage – how to recognize the image of God in the world, how to listen for the Spirit being at work in the world in a variety of places, and to be in touch with that, and to listen to the Spirit, and to allow our – the Spirit in us to recognize, as Paul does at the Areopagus, "In him we live and move and have our being."

That's not a Christian writing those words, and yet Paul recognizes it and says, "Yes, this is true." And he points it out and calls it what it is.

And then – so, here's another example, maybe. There's a difference in going to a bar just for entertainment and not realizing the effects that that's having on you, and going to actually engage people and engage the music that is there and really listen to a person.

And my guess is, as a part of what I'm hearing is is that you're teaching students to listen more carefully and more sensitively to what's written for the mix that's in the materials. And that oftentimes there is a good coming through it, or a wrestling coming through it, or a really good articulation of a tension coming through it that is a good part of being engaged with life.

And if we don't have habits in our lives that form our heart's desire – this is something that largely comes from James Smith's book Desiring the Kingdom – that form us – and I think literature can do that. Reading good literature can give us those experiences that are more than just, "Do this, don't do that," kind of explanation. And this is the parables, too, right?

It strikes me that good literature and good art exposes that.

So, I take it there's a lot of – you say there's a lot of conversation. My guess is is that a lot of the conversation is going into this direction of what the literature is doing for people and the way they are reflecting and almost getting them to think about a different way of reflection. Is that fair?

There's a place for that, but it short circuits the process if you come at the front end to a piece of literature only with the idea of judging, say, it's orthodox or non-orthodox theology.

And the point that I'm trying to get at here is is that sometimes we enter into conversation where we're interacting with people, we're interacting with ideas. Our tendency is to say, "All right, where is this in the truth meter, and what should my reaction be in light of that?"

And in the process, it creates static, if I can say it that way, for actually hearing what may be going on with the person and why they're oriented the way – the example I love to use is of my grandmother-in-law. My grandmother-in-law grew up in a home in which her father was supposedly to be this very devout Christian, but everything that he did in life ran against that. And he was the classic Christian hypocrite.

She wanted nothing to do with the Church when she grew up. Why? Because that was the model that she had that she reacted. Now, I say to people, "That's actually a very important piece of information for me to have about my grandmother-in-law, you know, and how I was to relate to her. And if I didn't know that, and didn't know how to react to that, I might simply say, 'Well, she just – she just hates the Church.' "

Well, wait a minute. There's something that's gone on in her life that has shoved her in that direction that is actually very important to be aware of. And I think literature can do this kind of thing for us as well.

And so, my guess is, is that you guys are thinking about not just using Tolkien and Lewis to do this, but that there's probably sequels coming?

It's a whole avenue of conversation for possibility of going to some very fruitful places without it being transparent that's where you're going, if I can say it that way, and actually end up being very beneficial in the process.

And the question is, "Why?"

Well, this – I feel like – you talked about drowning, but I feel like we just put our toe in the water and just got started with this conversation. But it's an interesting one. It's one that I think Christians tend not to engage in very often, and yet it can be very, very useful. So, I think you all for giving us kind of a initial preview into what you're doing and the way this works in the arts, and hopefully the conversation's been helpful to our listeners.