While some Christians distrust the role of subjective experience in matters of faith, the evangelical conversion narrative shaped Romantic literature and remains a hallmark feature of evangelicalism today. Two of Lewis’s most important writings, SURPRISED BY JOY and A GRIEF OBSERVED, reflect the decidedly Romantic turn to life writing as a means of narrating personal experience. Although worried by the “suffocatingly subjective” literary form, Lewis embraces life writing in order to explore his own story, even as he undermines the trustworthiness of memory in the process.

This is the second of three lectures in the 2023 Hansen Lectureship series "C.S. Lewis and the Romantic Imagination," by Jeffrey Barbeau, Professor of Theology at Wheaton College. The Ken and Jean Hansen Lectureship is an annual faculty lecture series named in honor of former Wheaton College trustee Ken Hansen and his wife Jean, and endowed in their memory by son Walter and Darlene Hansen.

The faculty respondent is Matthew Lundin, Associate Professor of History.

The lecture took place on February 23, 2023. Wade Center call number: CSL-Y / VR-158.