“… when I was commissioned by a publisher to write the life of C.S. Lewis, I thought ‘Oh, good, I am going to enjoy this very, very much.’ And I did enjoy it, but I found, in the course of writing that book, something had happened to me. I wouldn’t put it as strongly as to say that I had Read More ›
The strong influence of Dante’s Paradise in the life and writing of C. S. Lewis has gone almost unnoticed until now. I. Dante’s Paradise in the Life of C. S. Lewis C. S. Lewis read Dante’s Inferno in Italian when he was in his teens, and he read Dante’s Purgatory in the hospital when he was recovering from wounds he Read More ›
by Mike Perry In the US, copyright isn’t based on an extension of property ownership. It’s based on a public interest in seeing that the creators of new works are sufficiently rewarded to encourage them in their work. Seventy-five years takes in virtually anyone’s adult life, and life + 50 years would take in the life of the spouse even Read More ›
I I have bought a book titled Ruth Pitter: Homage to A Poet (1969) The introduction is by David Cecil, and the essays in her honor are by Cecil, Kathleen Raine, John Wain, John Betjeman and others. In Wain’s essay (“Poet of Living Form”), he writes: “C. S. Lewis, in his book on sixteenth-century English literature, makes a distinction between Read More ›
In the April 1999 issue of Mythprint David Bratman reviewed The Case ofPeter Rabbit: Changing Conditions of Literature for Children by Margaret Mackey (Garland, 1998, hc, 208 pp., $55.) Frederick Warne, Potter’s original publisher and copyright owner, is now a tiny imprint of a multimedia conglomorate. Mackey says the re-engraving of Potter’s art for copyright reasons has been poorly done, Read More ›
Last week the Kansas Board of Education voted to remove from state standards references to evolution as the underlying principle of biology. While the vote allows schools the freedom to teach about evolution, the battle is being reported as a simple conflict between scientific ‘evolutionists’ on one side and fundamentalist ‘creationists’ on the other, following the standard trope of the Read More ›
A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually from a common ancestor as Darwin’s theory predicts. When this conclusion upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: Read More ›
BETHLEHEM, Pa. — The debate leading the Kansas Board of Education to abolish the requirement for teaching evolution has about the same connection to reality as the play ‘Inherit the Wind’ had to the actual Scopes trial. In both cases complex historical, scientific and philosophical issues gave way to the simplifying demands of the morality play. If the schoolchildren of Read More ›
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has taken a bold stand on the state’s new Academic Achievement and Accountability Commission (editorial 8/5/99). The Post-Intelligencer is alarmed because (horrors!) the Republicans “want to use the commission to debate how education reform will unfold in this state.” According to the Post-Intelligencer the “debate is over.” Why, then, I wonder, should there be a commission at Read More ›