Lewis referred to this twentieth-century critical preoccupation as 'the personal heresy': the tendency to identify authors with their creations, assuming that each work is somehow and essentially a rehearsal of a writer's own life. As a renowned literary critic and literary historian, he had witnessed too many works passed off as 'literary criticism' that were instead imagined reconstructions of the author's composing process or thought life-poor substitutes for thoughtful attention to an author's text itself. Lewis proceeds in Surprised by Joy as one reluctant to reveal specific details of his life but who relents, as he suggests in the preface, in order both to answer 'requests that I would tell how I passed from Atheism to Christianity' and 'to correct one or two false notions that seem to have got about.' Lewis's reluctance involves not just the conventional modesty of the autobiographer who wishes to downplay the importance of his life, but stems as well from his conviction that no writer's work is especially illuminated by psychological inquiry into his or her life. Given the almost stifling attention that Lewis's private life has received since his death in 1963, Surprised by Joy stands apart as an astonishingly candid yet self-effacing volume by one widely-regarded as the premier Christian apologist of the twentieth century. In Surprised by Joy (1956), written seven years before his death, Lewis helps to shed light on all 'three Lewises' in his most personal book.Īs such, Surprised by Joy represents one of the few works within the Lewis canon that speaks directly and unabashedly about his personal life. In a varied and comprehensive writing career, Lewis carved out a sterling reputation as a scholar, a novelist, and a theologian for three very different audiences. The amazing thing, Barfield notes, is that those who may have known of Lewis in any single role may not have known that he performed in the other two. There was, first, Lewis the distinguished Oxford don and literary critic secondly, Lewis, the highly acclaimed author of science fiction and children's literature and thirdly, Lewis, the popular writer and broadcaster of Christian apologetics.

Lewises.' That is to say, there were three different vocations that Lewis fulfilled-and fulfilled successfully-in his lifetime.

Long-time friend and literary executor of the Lewis estate, Owen Barfield has suggested that there were, in fact, three 'C. Lewis: A Critical Summary and Overview Dr.

Lewis surprised by joy