SOURCE: "The Satiric Imagination of C. S. Lewis," in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. XXII, No. 2, Fall, 1989, pp. 129-48.

In the following essay, Schakel examines elements of satire in Lewis's fiction. Schakel asserts that "Lewis's success as a satirist, which has not been sufficiently taken into account in previous studies of Lewis, must be given attention if Lewis's works, and his literary imagination, are to be fully understood."

Although satire appears prominently in many of C. S. Lewis's works and is an important part of his thought and style, it has been largely neglected, at the cost of a full understanding of his works. Lewis is usually thought of as having the imagination of a romantic and a writer of fantasy, not that of a satirist. Yet, until late in his life, he wrote more and better satire than fantasy, and showed as much of the neoclassical...