| सारांश: | <p>This dissertation examines the significance of tragi-comedy in the theological writings of C.S. Lewis. It describes Lewis’s approach in terms of <i>charmolypi</i> (joy-sorrow), a word derived from John Climacus. I argue that Lewis’s charmolypic theological vision can address a dilemma in Christian theology. Some critics suspect that Christianity promotes escapism from the tragic conditions of human life, while others claim that it negates or undermines joy and laughter. Thus, Christianity is criticized for being insufficiently sorrowful but also insufficiently joyful. Lewis’s view of Christianity as something charmolypic might show a way to resolve this dilemma.</p>
<p>This research is original because almost no scholarly attention has been given to tragi-comedy in Lewis’s writings. With the single exception of Terry Lindvall’s 1996 <i>Surprised by Laughter</i>, scholars have examined Lewis’s views of comedy and tragedy within the confines of his literary criticism, but the possibility that these genres may have implications for his theological outlook.</p>
<p>The significance of this dissertation is threefold. First, it is the first ever dissertation on C.S. Lewis submitted to the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford University. Second, my archival work on an unpublished play Lewis wrote in 1942, analyzed in Chapter Three, is entirely new in scholarship on Lewis. Thirdly, the implications of my argument are significant. If Lewis’s charmolypic vision of Christianity is sufficiently tragic and comic, it can help address the present need for a theological imagination that properly affirms the sorrows and joys of human experience. Christian theology can learn something from Lewis about how to respond to both criticisms mentioned above in a persuasive and imaginatively compelling way.</p>
<p>The method used throughout this research is textual-interpretative and theological. It first interprets the primary texts in which Lewis, explicitly or implicitly, discusses tragi-comedy or depicts charmolypi and then examines the theological implications thereof.</p>
<p>The Introduction frames the dilemma and presents the thesis of this dissertation. Chapter One examines the “tragic horn” of the dilemma, and Lewis’s direct response to it. Chapter Two does the same with the “comic horn” of the dilemma. Chapter Three defines the central terms of the dissertation (tragedy, comedy, tragi-comedy), and relates them to the notion of charmolypi. Chapters Four through Seven survey how various theological doctrines are depicted as tragi-comic in Lewis’s writings. The Conclusion summarizes the overarching argument and delineates its contributions to Lewis scholarship and Christian theology.</p>
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