Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C. S. Lewis and Gender- Preface by Christopher W. Mitchell (Studies in Twentieth-Century British Literature, Band 12) - Hardcover

Hilder, Monika

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1433119897 ISBN 13: 9781433119897

Verlag: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. New York, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

C. S. Lewis, fantasy novelist, literary scholar, and Christian apologist, is one of the best-known and most original literary figures of the twentieth century. As one who stood at the crossroads of Edwardian and modern thinking, he is often read as a sexist or even misogynistic man of his time, but this fresh reading assesses Lewis as a prescient thinker who transformed typical Western gender paradigms. Surprised by the Feminine: A Rereading of C. S. Lewis and Gender proposes that Lewis’s highly nuanced metaphorical view of gender relations has been misunderstood precisely because it challenges Western chauvinist assumptions of sex and gender. Instead of perpetuating sexism, Lewis subverts the culturally inherited chauvinism of «masculine» classical heroism with the biblically inspired vision of a surprisingly «feminine» spiritual heroism. His view that we are all «feminine» in relation to the «masculine» God – a theological feminism that crosses gender lines – means that qualities we tend to gender as feminine, such as humility, are the qualities essential to being fully human. This book’s theoretical framework is Lewis’s own, grounded in his view of biblical thinking and informed by the thinking of writers such as Milton, Wordsworth, and George MacDonald; thus it has uniquely progressive implications for twenty-first-century cultural studies. This highly insightful and entertaining study of theological feminism in Lewis’s life’s work, from Dymer and The Pilgrim’s Regress, to The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and Till We Have Faces, will be compelling for anyone interested in fantasy literature, Inklings scholarship, gender discourse, ethical and spiritual discourse, the interplay of literature and theology, and cultural studies.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Monika B. Hilder is Associate Professor of English at Trinity Western University, where she teaches children’s and fantasy literature. She obtained her PhD at Simon Fraser University in literature education, for which she received the Dean of Graduate Studies Convocation Medal for Academic Excellence. She is the author of The Feminine Ethos in C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and The Gender Dance: Ironic Subversion in C. S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy; a 2011 recipient of the Clyde S. Kilby Research Grant, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Illinois; and Co-Director of the Inklings Institute of Canada.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. New York
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1433119897
• ISBN 13: 9781433119897
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 207
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: r.boehm-korff@peterlang.com; r.boehm-korff@peterlang.com; ; Gontardstraße 11; Berlin; 10178; Deutschland