Prof. Lee Oser

Prof. Lee Oser portrays the Inklings—and especially J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis—as a countercultural circle of Christian writers and scholars whose friendship, medieval learning, and shared experience of war grounded a robust Christian imagination that resisted modern secularism by telling better, theologically rich stories.

Prof. Lee Oser argues that Christian humanism—the “radical middle” between secularism and sectarianism—offers the best key to Shakespeare’s plays, showing how Julius Caesar and Hamlet dramatize our tragic ignorance about the fate of the soul and the limits of pagan and early modern attempts to know ourselves without fully knowing God.

Prof. Lee Oser explores the intertwined lives, faith journeys, and literary legacies of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and the Inklings, highlighting their countercultural Christian imagination against modernist trends.