The Inklings, the Victorians, and the Moderns

Abstract

In The Inklings, the Victorians, and the Moderns, the author examines the dynamics of a small group of twentieth-century traditionalists who reacted in opposition to the spirit of the intellectual movements of the modern age. In particular, he draws on the Inklings (e.g., C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien), Christian humanists such as G.K Chesterton, and other proponents of the Great Books and classical liberal learning to outline a position that eschewed reactionary rejections of modern thought, but sought to transcend its perceived limitations by asserting the continued value of myth, religion, liberal education, and ancient texts. They were more than instigators and wished to reconcile and translate conservative traditional ideas within a progressive modern scientific context. The author magnifies the intellectual trends in modern Western thought in the twentieth-century and provides the historical context for the resistance to the prominent and convincing tenets of modernity. Given the myriad responses, he focuses on a more conservative response to reductive definitions born out of well-intentioned progressivism. The author approaches the subject matter from an historical perspective, but utilizes an interdisciplinary discourse to create a multi-dimensional explanation of the intellectual atmosphere of the twentieth-century.