What Were the Inklings?

Send us Fan MailWhat Were the Inklings?Today’s episode deals with four people instead of one individual. They are often classified as one group because they were a band of university friends who argued, challenged, and inspired each other—the Inklings.”  You see, the Inklings were largely a group of Oxford professors, writers, and thinkers who met to read aloud, debate, and challenge one another. First, I'd like to concentrate on Mr. CS Lewis. Is what I have been saying a fair way to express it. Yes Mr. Bartley, when you and your audience think of me today, you probably often picture The Chronicles of Narnia, or my rational, graceful Christian apologetics. But to really understand me, you need to see me inside a unique circle of writers and thinkers: the Inklings—a group that met in Oxford in the 1930s and ’40s to read aloud, critique, and sometimes spar over each other’s works. That is why this episode is about the group called the inklingsAnd Mr. Bartley, I do believe that my love of myth, the study of language, its history, and how it shapes thought—shaped the group’s imagination. JRR Tolkien didn’t just make up languages for fun; he spent hours analyzing old tongues to make Elvish and other Middle-earth languages feel authentic. He spent so long lecturing me on the difference between a fairytale and a proper myth that I joked that I might need a dictionary just to keep up!Then there was Charles Williams, a poet, novelist, and theologian with a mystical streak that pushed me to explore the spiritual depths of story. Williams could be so intense that the others sometimes left a meeting feeling like they’d just survived a philosophical thunderstorm—but I secretly loved the challenge.Support the showThank you for experiencing Celebrate Creativity.