Friar Jack, The Science-Fiction Apologist: Exploring “The Friar of Oxford” by William Lindsay Gresham

Authors

G. Connor Salter, Independent ScholarFollow
Sørina HigginsFollow

Artists and Illustrations Included in This Record

Abstract

Few Inklings scholars have explored William Lindsay Gresham’s life outside of the fact that he was married to Joy Davidman. His poem “The Friar of Oxford,” published here for the first time, shows a surprising level of engagement with C.S. Lewis’s ideas, combining war imagery with references to the Ransom Cycle and a “mushroom cloud” reference that may show he explored one of Lewis’s literary influences. The poem’s contents add to existing Gresham-Inklings scholarship, and show Gresham accomplishing the same goals that the Inklings and their associates like Dorothy L. Sayers accomplished in their “escapist” or mythopoeic works.

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