Steven Beebe, Regents’ Professor and Chair of the Texas State Department of Communication Studies, recently discovered portions of an unpublished manuscript from C. S. Lewis in the Oxford University Bodleian Library. Beebe has documented that this was possibly the beginning of a possible book project by Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien on language. This is from the Texas State University News Release:
“What is exciting” said Beebe, “is that the manuscript includes some of Lewis’s best and most precise statements about the nature of language and meaning. Both Lewis and Tolkien wrote separately about language, communication, and meaning, but they published nothing collaboratively.”
The article Beebe wrote documenting his discovery, “Language and Human Nature Manuscript Fragment Found: C. S. Lewis On Language and Meaning,” will be published next year in the Journal Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review. The journal Seven publishes scholarship that focuses on the work of seven prominent 20th Century British authors including both Lewis and Tolkien.
