Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
By C. S. Lewis
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About this ebook
This entertaining and learned volume contains book reviews, lectures, and hard to find articles from the late C. S. Lewis, whose constant aim was to show the twentieth–century reader how to read and understand old books and manuscripts. Highlighting works by Spenser, Dante, Malory, Tasso, and Milton, Lewis provides a refreshing update to medieval and Renaissance criticism, and equips modern readers to understand these works in a new way.
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and have been transformed into three major motion pictures. Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) fue uno de los intelectuales más importantes del siglo veinte y podría decirse que fue el escritor cristiano más influyente de su tiempo. Fue profesor particular de literatura inglesa y miembro de la junta de gobierno en la Universidad Oxford hasta 1954, cuando fue nombrado profesor de literatura medieval y renacentista en la Universidad Cambridge, cargo que desempeñó hasta que se jubiló. Sus contribuciones a la crítica literaria, literatura infantil, literatura fantástica y teología popular le trajeron fama y aclamación a nivel internacional. C. S. Lewis escribió más de treinta libros, lo cual le permitió alcanzar una enorme audiencia, y sus obras aún atraen a miles de nuevos lectores cada año. Sus más distinguidas y populares obras incluyen Las Crónicas de Narnia, Los Cuatro Amores, Cartas del Diablo a Su Sobrino y Mero Cristianismo.
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Reviews for Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature
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- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5These studies have been taken from lecture notes or books begun and abandoned by Lewis and were probably never meant for publication. They have been collected and edited by Walter Hooper and were published as a book of essays in 1966 three years after Lewis's death.The essays are certainly more than just scrapings from the bottom of a barrel, they are mostly well written, stand up well enough on their own and provide plenty of thoughtful material. The first three provide an excellent introduction on how to approach a medieval text and how to view the medieval world. The next three will be of interest for those reading, or familiar with Dante's Divine Comedy and the final bunch covers Edmund Spenser and his Faerie Queene. There are also short essays on Malory's Morte d'Arthur and Tasso.I found some gems in the first three essays on medieval text and was hooked on reading the very first paragraph of the first essay: De Audiendis Poetis (How to study Poetry):"There are more ways than one of reading old books. A choice between two of them is well expressed by Mr Spiers when he denounces as 'discouraging' that before the modern reader can properly appreciate a medieval poem he must first have somehow put himself back into the age when it was composed. For thus he will be seeking not 'what the poem means', but 'what it once meant' and will become concerned less with reading and responding to a poem than with reading outside itThat anything that takes us outside the poem and leaves us there is regrettable, I fully agree. But we may have to go outside it in order that we may come inside it again, better equipped."In the essay Genesis of a Medieval Book Lewis discusses authorship and points to the differences of the medieval approach to our own today. Lewis says Medieval writers were engaged in a sort of 'touching up' exercise; why invent new stories when there were plenty of excellent old stories available. He was concerned with presenting the story to a medieval audience and if this involved embellishment or emasculation then so be it. He was not concerned with accuracy or in many instances with the modern idea of authorship. Lewis's essay on Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages attempts to present to us a medieval persons view of the world. In the excellent The Discarded Image he explains this at some length but here the shorter version is no less effective.In Morte d'Arthur Lewis is concerned with exploring Malory's view of the world especially his ideas on nobility which is a key theme in the work. The essays on Dante's The Divine Comedy follows some close reading of the text and will be of interest to those people reading or familiar with the poem. The essays on Spenser are a 'mixed bag' There are good essays on Tasso's influence, the life of Spenser and how to approach The Faerie Queene, however essays on Neo-Platonism and the role of Genius in Spenser's allegory are dense and scholarly.Not an essential book and it would be only of limited interest to the casual reader. However with my interest in medieval literature and Edmund Spenser there was more than enough to keep me interested
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Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature - C. S. Lewis
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