SOURCE: “Undenominational Satire: Chesterton and Lewis Revisited,” in Religion & Literature, Vol. 24, No. 1, Spring, 1992, pp. 33-57.

In the following excerpt, Kantra examines G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis, concentrating on their roles as religious satirists and Christian apologists.

The intricate affinities of G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis are nowadays often mentioned though still undefined. In the always unfinished business of literary theory, among proponents of religion and literature, and between religion or literature, Chesterton and Lewis can be seen to provoke much dysfunctional sympathy. I have been pondering anew what looks like an amorphous and not altogether agreeable “Chesterlewis” that is crowding out Shaw's “Chesterbelloc” and looming large as a cultural artifact since mid-century. Especially apparent in the literary industry of Christian apology, its point of origin is Lewis's autobiographically expressed indebtedness to Chesterton regarding his religious conversion (Surprised by Joy 213, 223, 235). Much less attention has been...