Category: Literary Studies
Posts of studies, opinions, and reviews on English literature and authors.
Anything But…
Aaron Brickle When is a person the least happy? At what point is someone so distressed that they are the farthest they will ever be from happiness? Is it right […]
C.S. Lewis, Fantasy Tales, and How to Say Best What’s to be Said
Jessica Mau C.S. Lewis explains in his essay “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say What’s Best to be Said” how writing a story starts and why he chose to write fairy […]
A Light in the Darkness
Melissa Woodland In Jennifer Niven’s young adult book, All the Bright Places, you can expect to find two teenagers who are struggling with grief, depression, suicide, and finding their way […]
C.S. Lewis, Sci-Fi, and Displaced Persons
Sadie Wyant Though C.S. Lewis wrote 3 acclaimed science fiction novels, he is not always identified with the sci-fi genre. Aside from his fiction, Lewis also provided some useful criticism […]
A Chorus of Echoes
Sadie Wyant Echo, a young adult novel written by Pam Muñoz Ryan, is a tale about lives woven together through time and distance. The 587-page book is broken up into […]
C.S. Lewis and Rereading Stories
Priscilla Collins In his essay “On Stories,” C.S. Lewis dissects the purpose of a story. Lewis argues that a good story must do more than simply tell of a series […]
Digging for More Mystery
Priscilla Collins In his debut novel The Life We Bury, Allen Eskens writes a gripping mystery that leaves you guessing until the very end. The story begins in Minnesota, where […]
Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis debate God
Marshall Tankersley, Student Editor How is it possible that two men with such similar backgrounds can come to divergent ends in life? This is the question that Harvard psychiatrist and […]
The Nightingale Review
Michaela Swedberg Kristin Hannah’s The Nightingale, winner of the 2015 BookBrowse Fiction Award, is a heartbreaking story of two sisters caught up in the terror of Nazi occupied France throughout […]
Between You & Me, this is a Great Book!
Courtney Wallace Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen, written by Mary Norris, makes learning grammar fun. Part memoir and part usage guide, Norris tells her journey climbing […]
The Professor and the Madman
Marshall Tankersley, Student Editor In his book The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (1998), Simon Winchester chronicles the […]
A reflection on why we write
Chad Chisholm, CIFC Director In October 2002, I was a graduate student when I was asked to interview nationally-renowned poet Vivian Shipley for The South Carolina Review. She was a […]