A Fantasy World In My Heart: Understanding C. S. Lewis' Enlightening Views From On Three Ways Of Writing For Children

Clive Stable Lewis (1898-1963), a British writer, scholar and outstanding critic, is well accepted as one of the most important Christian writers in 20^th century. Apart from literary writing, C. S. Lewis devotes his whole life to researching in literature, philosophy and theology, especially in British literature of Medieval and the Renaissance periods, and he is followed by a lot of people for his widespread influence in 20^th century. C. S. Lewis is not only famous for his children's literary work The Chronicles of Narnia but also some other writings about theological dissertation and research in medieval literature. C. S. Lewis'theory On Three Ways of Writing for Children, which exactly expresses Lewis'aesthetic point of writing with artistic consideration of three ways of writing for children, is greatly influential in research field of children's literary writing.The whole thesis is composed of six chapters. Chapter 1 generalizes the main idea of whole thesis and brief introduction of C. S. Lewis and his literary works to gain more comprehensive information. Chapter 2 explains in details children's literary works development history from World War One to 1950 when Lewis'theory of On Three Ways of Writing for Children was written. Chapter 3 is the detailed discussion on theory abstracted by C. S. Lewis in his article On Three Ways of Writing for Children. Chapter 4 investigates embodiment of Lewis'theory in E. Nesbit's magic books, Alice Stories, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows, Tolkien's Magic Rings series to show the reasons they arouse readers'interest and their fantastic enchantment . Chapter 5 demonstrates the applicability of C. S. Lewis'theory to The Chronicles of Narnia: how to express what you have to say in the right form. Chapter 6 concludes the whole thesis. In a word, I intend to make a comprehensive study in the cultural and literary levels on Lewis'theory of writing ways for children in a new angle, and meanwhile, apply his theory to the further study of children's literature.