Pictured above:  the rugged North Irish coast the writer C. S. Lewis visited throughout his life

David Faldet

Rachel Faldet

English 239: Tolkien and Lewis in Context (England / France)

INSTRUCTORS:  David Faldet (English); Rachel Faldet (English)

Course Description:  J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were both orphaned as children, saw their childhood village swallowed by a city, studied language and literature at Oxford, became military casualties in France, taught and lived in Oxford, collaborated in writing, discussed faith, and created their own mythologies of places where the sacred is threatened by the spread of evil.  Our travels will follow the lives of these two writers from childhoods in Northern Ireland and Birmingham, to England’s national center of London, to the battlefields of France, and back to the city they most loved (Oxford) to see how and why urbanization, mechanized war, disenchantment, and ideas of heroism figure in their work.