Redeeming the Romantics

In 2023, Jeffrey W. Barbeau, professor of theology at Wheaton, delivered the college’s Hansen lectures in which he explored the influence of English Romanticism on C.S. Lewis’ imagination and theology. Those lectures are now available in The Last Romantic: C.S. Lewis, English Literature, and Modern Theology (IVP Academic, 176 pp.). Based on years of study in Romanticism and theology, plus recent work at the Wade Center, Barbeau’s book argues not only that Lewis’ claims not to be a theologian are too self-effacing, but also that the marginalia in Lewis’ personal library reveal a deep engagement with both Romantic thinkers and modern theology.

The founder of the lectureship, G. Walter Hansen, took a course on Romantic literature with the legendary Wheaton English professor Clyde Kilby in the 1960s. Kilby taught at Wheaton for more than forty years and is perhaps most famous for interacting with the Inklings and founding the Wade Center. Barbeau focuses on Wheaton professors so much in the beginning of the book because a faculty debate in the 1960s introduced a unique suspicion regarding the influence of Romanticism on Lewis. Kilby’s 1967 essay “The Aesthetic Poverty of Evangelicalism” never once mentions Lewis, yet Kilby’s colleagues appear to have taken the indictment as a defense of Lewis’ work, leading to a “trial of C.S. Lewis” in which Morris Inch, eventual chair of the Bible Department at Wheaton, accused Lewis of indirectly promoting the theology of Schleiermacher, threatening Christian orthodoxy with a Romantic emphasis on subjective feelings.

Thus, in Chapter 1, Barbeau examines the history of German idealism and British Romanticism and acknowledges that Lewis does begin some of his works of Christian apologetics with personal experiences. For example, the opening line of Mere Christianity confronts readers with the common experience of overhearing people quarrelling. Similarly, The Abolition of Man not only cites approvingly the imaginative poetry of many Romantics, but it also advances personal experience in the first chapter, famously in the section about how viewing a waterfall makes someone feel. However, Barbeau denies that Lewis’ affinity for personal experience amounts to the self-projection of Feuerbach. Rather, Lewis’ epistemological method always moves from subjective experience to objective reality.

In Chapter 2, Barbeau shifts to an inspection of the tradition of writing spiritual autobiography, connecting Lewis’ memoirs—A Grief Observed and Surprised by Joy—to Methodist practices and the poetry and theology of Wordsworth and Coleridge. Barbeau argues that Lewis’ conversion bears marks of anxious Romantic narrative patterns as he adapts private experience for public benefit. According to Barbeau, Methodist founder John Wesley was sometimes accused of “enthusiasm,” and those of a more rationalist proclivity were often suspicious of the effect of Methodist preaching. Ironically, Wesley’s published Journal is not a product of spontaneous feelings but is instead a careful reworking of his diary entries. Perhaps Barbeau’s most provocative claim is that Lewis similarly reworks his diary entries after the death of his wife Joy, constructing a narrator for A Grief Observed and possibly never actually struggling with his faith.

Lewis’ Surprised by Joy takes its title from a Wordsworth sonnet and exhibits some similarities to Wordsworth’s autobiography, The Prelude, which focuses less on converting from a sinful lifestyle and more on the growth of the mind. It is clear from Lewis’ letters that he was reading much in Wordsworth and Coleridge as he was in the process of converting to Christianity, and as factually helpful as it is for Alister McGrath to have corrected the year of Lewis’ conversion (which was in 1930, not 1929 as Lewis claims), it is unfortunate that Lewis’ ongoing spiritual development in 1929 is sometimes downplayed.

The argument of the third chapter may be the most difficult for some readers to follow, as Barbeau discusses how symbols, sacraments, nature, and the numinous contribute to the power of imaginative stories. In broad strokes, Barbeau demonstrates Lewis’ appreciation of the early Romantics’ shift away from idolizing nature while still valuing its powerful pedagogical capacity. Barbeau ranges across several of Lewis’ works, including The Great Divorce and “Transposition,” both of which show a reliance on Romantic sources such as Blake and Coleridge.

Each chapter is followed by a brief response by a Wheaton faculty member. Interestingly, the respondent to Chapter 3 (Keith Johnson) supplies the weightiest critique by questioning the usage of the term sacramentality without direct reference to the work of Christ. Johnson states bluntly, “I am not convinced that Lewis’ writings will actually provide the solution to the aesthetic and intellectual poverty of evangelicalism in the way Clyde Kilby hoped so many years ago.”

To be fair, we should remember that not only do evangelicals (or Catholics) not have a monopoly on aesthetic poverty, but it’s not even close. We Christians are often quick to judge ourselves, as if that makes us mature, honest, or self-reflective. But the reality is that unbelievers produce an incredible amount of bad art too. Doing things poorly is profoundly human. Barbeau does respond to Johnson and the other respondents in the book’s conclusion, partially agreeing that sometimes Christ’s work is not explicit in Lewis’ writings, although it’s difficult to argue that the creator of Aslan decentered the work of Christ.

Barbeau’s book is vigorously researched, in both primary and secondary sources, and in the appendix readers are treated to a transcript of four previously unpublished poetic fragments that Lewis wrote in the back of a book of Wordsworth’s short poetry. As one of the respondents writes, Barbeau’s work shows how archival work can produce fresh insights. We have seen from recent books such as Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self that English Romanticism, especially that of the later Romantics such as Percy Shelley, has earned its negative reputation for subjectivizing aesthetics and reducing the self to sexual urges. But Barbeau shows through an examination of Lewis’ notes and published works that even Romanticism can be redeemed.