Volume 6, number 1 (April 2016)

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

No abstract available.

Epistolary fiction, often thought of as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, enjoys considerable vitality in our time and has attracted much welcome critical attention in recent years. The focus, however, has been on selected aspects of the epistolary tradition, to the neglect of others that are part of its rich history. At the same time, discussions of C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters (1942) have generally concentrated on its theological, moral, and satirical aspects, with little consideration of the generic identification declared in the book’s title. Attention to its striking affiliations with the epistolary tradition in fiction sheds light on Lewis’s artistry in the work, on current critical discourse concerning epistolarity, on Lewis’s social and cultural criticism, and on his contributions to critical theory. In the present study, selected aspects of the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century epistolary tradition are briefly surveyed; then, matters of setting, plot, characterization (especially), and handling of viewpoint in The Screwtape Letters are considered, as well as its widespread debts to the literary heritage and its relationship to Lewis’s own contributions as a literary scholar and critic. Attention is given to the implications of Lewis’s original preface which has recently been discovered.

Read or download