The Loss and the Silence

The Loss and the Silence: Aspects of Modernism in the Works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien & Charles Williams
Author	Margaret Hiley
Illustrator	Margaret Hiley (front cover)
Publisher	Walking Tree Publishers
Released	2 November 2011
Format	Paperback
Pages	256
ISBN	978-3-905703-19-1
Series	Cormarë Series
Preceded by	The Ecological Augury in the Works of JRR Tolkien
Followed by	Hobbit Place-names

The Loss and the Silence: Aspects of Modernism in the Works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien & Charles Williams is a 2011 book investigating the topic of modernism in the writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. It is published as No. 22 in the Cormarë Series.

From the publisher

Traditionally, the "Inklings" C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams have been seen as separate from the literature of their time: as innovative in an idiosyncratic way at best, and as reactionary and in deliberate opposition to contemporary progressive writing at worst. Recent years have seen a gradual change in this view, but few studies to date have attempted to read Lewis, Tolkien and Williams alongside their most famous contemporaries: the literary modernists.This monograph represents the first full-length study to draw explicit and indepth comparisons between the Inklings and writers such as T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, and David Jones among others. An examination of both thematic and structural concerns reveals a number of shared issues that go beyond mere responses to the cataclysmic events of the first half of the twentieth century. Myth as theme and structuring device, world-building as an attempt to render the author's subjective reality objective and authoritative, writing as an (unsuccessful) attempt to overcome the nightmare of history, and language as both the paradoxical means of creation and the reason creation must fail: these concerns and tensions are central to the works of both Inklings and modernists. In establishing that the works of Lewis, Tolkien and Williams contain aspects that can be termed 'modernist', this study also hopes to show that certain aspects of modernism might very well be termed "fantastic".

Contents

• Introduction

• Chapter One: Inklings and Modernists – Shared Contexts
  • The Modernist Movement
  • Inklings and Modernists: The Biographical Connections
  • Shared Literary Concerns

• Chapter Two: War
  • Modern War, Modern Literature
  • Fantasy and War
  • The Inklings at War
  • Charles Williams, David Jones and the Matter of Britain
  • Celtic Literature of Defeat
  • Waste Lands
  • Bodies and Corpses
  • Heroes
  • War, Language and Liturgy

• Chapter Three: History
  • Modernist Histories: Yeats's Historical Models
  • Fantastic Cycles: Tolkien's History of Middle-earth
  • Myth and History
  • Nationalist Histories
  • Escapes from History and Time
  • "Lateness"

External links

• Official product page