Jacobs, Alan 1958–

PERSONAL: Born 1958. Education: University of Alabama, B.A., 1980; University of Virginia, Ph.D., 1987.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of English, Wheaton College, 501 College Ave., Wheaton, IL 60187-5593. E-mail—alan.jacobs@wheaton.edu.

CAREER: Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, professor, 1984–. Member, Conference on Christianity and Literature.

WRITINGS:

What Became of Wystan: Change and Continuity in Auden's Poetry, University of Arkansas Press (Fayetteville, AR), 1998.

A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love, Westview Press (New York, NY), 2001.

A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age, Brazos Press (Grand Rapids, MI), 2001.

(Editor, with Ken R. Chase) Must Christianity Be Violent?: Reflections on History, Practice, and Theology, Brazos Press (Grand Rapids, MI), 2003.

Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling, Eerdmans (Grand Rapids, MI), 2004.

The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of CS. Lewis, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2005.

Contributor to books, including Literature and the Renewal of the Public Sphere, edited by Susan Van-Zanten Gallagher and M.D. Walhout, Macmillan (London, England), 2000; Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith, edited by Susan M. Felch and Paul J. Contino, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 2001; The Force of Tradition: Response and Resistance in Literature, Religion, and Cultural Studies, edited by Donald Marshall, Rowman & Littlefleld (Lanham, MD), 2005. Also contributor to periodicals, including American Scholar, Cimarron Review, Arachne, Hudson Review, Renascence, First Things, Boston Glove, Weekly Standard, Books & Culture, and the Oxford American.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book titled Life Genres: The Personal Dimension of Narrative Theology, for Eerdmans.

SIDELIGHTS: Alan lacobs is a college professor whose primary research interests deal with the connections between literature and Christian theology. While on the English faculty at Wheaton College, Jacobs has had access to the Marion Wade Center, which houses the archives of C.S. Lewis, the late English author who was noted for Christian themes in his writings. Lewis is the topic of lacob's 2005 book, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, a biography that emphasizes lacobs's own interpretation of Lewis's works of fiction. A reviewer for Kirkus Reviews summarized it as "an amiable, uncluttered biography" that "provides a key to Lewis' Christian hierarchy of Narnia." Unlike similar works on Lewis, this biography is not arranged chronologically. This led a Publishers Weekly reviewer to comment that the "thematic organization could leave some readers a tad confused as he skips back and forth in time." Library Journal contributor Ron Ratliff, however, was impressed with this biography, asserting that it "is destined to become a standard work on Lewis for some time."

Jacobs's 2004 publication, Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling, contains a dozen essays on culture and literature by various well-known authors who have attempted, and often failed, to describe the truth of the human condition. Jacobs analyzes these essays, including those by W.H. Auden, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the core argument being that simplicity in truthtelling can often sound prophetic, but it usually misses the mark by ignoring the complexity of life. Many critics believed Jacobs does a superb job with his analysis. Weekly Standard contributor Abram Van Engen, for one, remarked that Jacobs "may be our best writer at exposing the simplistic failure of would-be 'prophetic voices.'" In Library Journal, Wesley A. Mills expressed concern that this "rigorous intellectual analysis" may be "too serious and even arduous" for those without a solid literary background. However, Paul J. Griffiths, writing in First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, called Shaming the Devil a "delight to read" and praised Jacobs for having a "deeply sacramental understanding of the nature of literary work, a delicate and careful way with other people's texts, and a style of his own that filigrees profundity with wit."

Fifteen of Jacobs's own "moral essays" make up the text of A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age. Reviewers enjoyed this collection, while frequently comparing the essays to those of Samuel Johnson, C.S. Lewis, and George Orwell. In Booklist Ray Olson called the book "highly readable" and "wonderfully literate." Writing in the Christian Century, James Calvin Schaap noted the "uncommonly fine use of language," adding that it is "perfectly suited for intellectual wandering." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly concluded that the "absorbing collection … combines a confident Christian worldview with personal humility, grace, and a wry sense of humor."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2001, Ray Olson, review of A Visit to Vanity Fair: Moral Essays on the Present Age, p. 17; September 1, 2004, Ray Olson, review of Shaming the Devil: Essays in Truthtelling, p. 22.

Christian Century, October 17, 2001, James Calvin Schaap, review of A Visit to Vanity Fair, p. 31; November 29, 2005, Gilbert Meilaender, review of The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis, p. 35.

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, October, 2001, review of A Visit to Vanity Fair, p. 65; March 2005, Paul J. Griffiths, review of Shaming the Devil, p. 55; January, 2006, Dermot Quinn, review of The Narnian, p. 39.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2005, review of The Narnian, p. 829.

Library Journal, November 15, 2004, Wesley A. Mills, review of Shaming the Devil, p. 65; November 15, 2005, Ron Ratliff, review of The Narnian, p. 70.

New Republic, December 26, 2005, Richard Jenkyns, review of The Narnian, p. 29.

Publishers Weekly, August 13, 2001, review of A Visit to Vanity Fair, p. 308; August 16, 2004, review of Shaming the Devil, p. 61; July 25, 2005, review of The Narnian, p. 72; August 15, 2005, review of The Narnian, p. 48.

Weekly Standard, December 13, 2004, Abram Van Engen, review of Shaming the Devil, p. 39.

ONLINE

Wheaton College, Department of English Web site, http://www.wheaton.edu/english/ (March 6, 2006), career information on Alan Jacobs.