Conference Theme Statement:
One theme that courses through the significant literary contributions of Thornton Wilder is his exploration of time and eternity. Exploration is the correct word. Wilder’s exploration of this theme has its focus on the ordinary lives of ordinary people. Through his characters, Wilder examines the ways in which the universal themes of time, death, and faith are expressed in the mundane rhythms of everyday life: a meal, a daily ritual, a plan, or a day that is shattered by the unexpected. There is a sense that Wilder was seeking to provide a “fine reading” of ordinary life as evidence for the mysterious, transcendent meaning of life. He observes but does not impose. He allows his characters to speak. He resists the temptation to sermonize. He leaves the questions on the table.
The sponsors of this mini conference invite you to explore, to ask questions along with Wilder, and ponder the implications of the questions that linger at the edges of his plays. We will examine two of Wilder’s one-act plays and ponder the implications of the clues that he leaves along the journey. Within the schedule, time will be given to discuss, to ponder, and to wonder.
An Important Question:
Some may be asking the following question: why should the C. S. Lewis Study Center be engaged in a conference focused upon the work of Thornton Wilder? This is an important question. Wilder became the epitome of American letters and culture during the 20th Century. His novels and plays captured the questions that lie under the surface of America’s rise to power and influence as both a guardian of Western Civilization and as an “experiment” which calls into question some of its own foundations. Wilder is a “modern man” who longs for a stable place to stand in a cultural context deeply fractured by two World Wars and the dawn of the “Atomic Age.”
Wilder was born in 1897 and lived until 1975. He was raised in China, traveled the world, and interacted with major intellectual figures in the arts and letters. His educational journey included Oberlin College, Yale University, and Princeton University. He mastered several languages and translated works from both French and German. Wilder was an important figure in the history of the MacDowell Colony beginning with his first stay in 1924.
During the course of his life, he received three Pulitzer Prizes. The first was for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927). The second and third were for his plays Our Town (1938) and The Skin Of Our Teeth (1942). Wilder was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy in July 1963, and it was conferred by President Lyndon B. Johnson in December 1963, after Kennedy’s assassination. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago (1930-1936) and Harvard University (1950-1951).
Wilder also collaborated with creatives outside the theatrical world. For example, he wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 film Shadow of a Doubt, and he wrote the libretti for two opera adaptations of his lesser-known plays: The Long Christmas Dinner (composed by Paul Hindemith) and The Alcestiad (composed by Louuse Talma). The range of his work in various genres and the international impact of his distinctive voice made Thornton Wilder a major figure in mid-20th Century American culture.
The life of C. S. Lewis and the life of Thornton Wilder parallel and diverge along the fracture points of 20th century culture. Both men served their respective countries during the last years of WWI. Both men experienced, in different degrees, the nihilism of the post-WWI period. Both men pursued the question of meaning in different literary genres: Wilder in his first novels, The Cabala and The Bridge of San Luis Rey; and Lewis in his narrative poem, Dymer, as well as in his works written in the 1930s through the 1950s. The landscape of mid-twentieth century culture serves as the backdrop for their primary areas of creative work. Wilder engaged the fragile character of life through novels and plays. Lewis engaged the contradictions and complexities of 20th Century life through his academic work, essays and apologetic texts. Lewis’s novels took the reader into space or other worlds or into mythic pre-Christian culture. An examination and comparison of their work, as we explore both throughout this conference, will be instructive to our efforts to relate faith and culture.