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In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford. Within months of entering Oxford, the British Army shipped him to France to fight in the First World War. His experience of the horror of war push him confirmed his atheism and he fell away from his faith during that period, though Lewis was baptized in the Church of Ireland (C.S.Lewis, 1955).
On 15 April 1918, Lewis got wounded, suffering from deep depression and homesickness during his convalescence. He was demobilised in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English literature at Cambridge University until 1954 when he was elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University. At the age of 32, Lewis returned to his original faith by the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an ordinary layman of the Church of England, advocating the tradition the Christian humanism and opposing the secular modernism. His faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts (1941-1944) on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim (C. S. Lewis, 1955).
As for his masterpieces, he is best known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters (1941), The Chronicles of Narnia (1949-1954), and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity (1952), based on radio broadcasts about Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain (1940). Lewis’s works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies.
Lewis’s most popular work--The Chronicles of Narnia, regarded as a classical children’s literature contains series of seven fantasy novels (including The Magician’s Nephew written in 1955;The Lion,the Witch and the Wardrobe written in 1950;Prince Caspian written in 1951;The Voyage of the Dawn Treader written in 1952;The Silver Chair written in 1953;The Horse and His Boy written in 1954;The Last Battle written in 1956) written between 1949 and 1954. In 1930s, chatting with Tolkien in a tavern around the University of Oxford, Lewis shared ideas and reached agreement to write a fantasy epic respectively. After many years, the tavern became the holy land in numerous readers’ hearts, because it gave birth to two great books relative to belief and imagination--The Chronicles of Narnia (by Lewis) and The Lord of the Rings (by J.R.R. Tolkien).
The first book of The Chronicles of Narnia Lewis published among the series of seven novels but the 源^自·优尔|文\论]文'网[www.youerw.com
second one in sequential order, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, illustrates an adventure in Narnia among four Pevensies children--Lucy, Peter, Susan and Edmund. Under the threat of air strikes during The Second World War, they were sent scurrying for cover in a big house of the old professor Digory Kirke where they found a magical wardrobe serving as an approach to a mysterious Kingdom--Narnia. There were the Faun, beaver, dwarf, Sylvans and so on. After Aslan left the Narnia, the country was occupied by an evil witch. The inhabitants were crackdown in the eternal winter. The Faun had risked his life to save Lucy. The beavers help them to get rid of the hunter of the white witch. Because of White Witch’s Turkey candy temptation, Edmond betrayed his brother and sisters. Later, Aslan led them to overcome the witch. He sacrifices himself in a battle for Narnia which results in the Satanic White Witch being vanquished, Aslan resurrected, and the British children installed as Narnia’s rightful rulers. They know fear of the White Witch and learn to love the benign Lion, Aslan. They stay in Narnia for years but when they return to their world no one has even missed them.
1.2 Literature Review
So far, Most of Lewis’s posthumous works have been edited by his literary executor, Walter Hooper, his works have been published by Harper Collins Publishers and The Chronicles of Narnia was studied abroad from different perspectives, especially in England and America. Besides, in the U. S. A., more academic societies on Lewis were established. C. S. Lewis Foundation is one of the societies established The Kilns Association, in 1984 for the purpose of purchasing and restoring C. S. Lewis’s home in Oxford, England. In Kins, C. S. Lewis Study Center was also established. The Foundation and Study Center often hosts a lot of symposium, seminars and forum centered on Lewis’s works.