Dr. Michael Ward, one of the world’s foremost C. S. Lewis scholars, will speak at Missouri State on Tuesday, 10 April, at 7:30 p.m. in Glass 101.  His talk will be about “The Heavens Are Telling the Glory of God: C. S. Lewis, Narnia, and the Planets”.

Millions of people have been captivated by C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia—but some questions about them have been difficult to answer. Why are there seven books? Why are only three of them obviously structured around biblical narratives? Many have attempted to discover the organizing key, the “secret code,” of the Chronicles, but it has remained a mystery—until now. Michael Ward reveals the single subject that links all seven novels. He explains how Lewis structured the series, why he kept the code secret, and what it shows about his understanding of the universe and the Christian faith. Scholars have hailed Ward’s discovery as the most ground-breaking work ever done on the Chronicles of Narnia, and once you know it, you will never read them in the same way again.

Dr Michael Ward (St Peter’s College, University of Oxford) is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and author of Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008).  He presented the BBC television documentary, The Narnia Code (2009), and lived for three years in Lewis’s Oxford home, The Kilns, as resident warden.  He has lectured on Lewis, Tolkien, and the Inklings all over the United States.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies and the College of Humanities and Public Affairs.