Jonathan Cooper
British Literature
Mrs. Bloom
May 14, 2007
The Knowledge, Analysis, and Communication of C.S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis, a don, then fellow at Oxford and finally professor at Cambridge, not only excelled in literary criticism but also apologetics, satire, fantasy, poetry and science fiction. Dr. Bruce L. Edwards wrote, “No brief summary can thus do justice to the many and varied works Lewis produced in his lifetime between 1919-1961.” (C. S. Lewis: A Modest Literary Biography)A
Quantity certainly did not diminish Lewis’s quality. He possessed, according to the Saturday Review, “A powerful, discriminating and poetic mind, great learning, startling wit, and overwhelming imagination.” (Lewissociety.org © 2006) The New Yorker lauded, “If wit and wisdom, style and scholarship are requisites to passage through the pearly gates, Mr. Lewis will be among the angels.” (Lewissociety.org © 2006) But Christianity Today topped them all; in 2000, an article’s subtitle read, “The atheist scholar who became an Anglican, an apologist, and a patron saint of Christians everywhere.” (Olson Apologetics: C.S. Lewis)
On lives the legend of Lewis. A gushing fountain of books analyze his reason, imagination, arguments, feelings, passions and personal life such as the following: The Magic Never Ends: The Life and Works of C.S. Lewis, The Narnian, The Most Reluctant Convert: C.S. Lewis's Journey to Faith, Jack's Life: The Life Story of C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, Through the Shadowlands: The Love Story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman, A Shiver of Wonder: A Life of C.S. Lewis, to name a few. B Admiration and fascination continue.
This paper’s investigation may provide the reason. C Regarding literature and religion, C. S. Lewis had sufficient knowledge, exercised levelheaded analysis and masterfully communicated the end result. Simply put, the scholar and apologist investigated, concluded and conveyed. The following paper sequentially examines those three topics.
The fundamental question is, “What did Lewis know?” After all, validity rests on this point; if Lewis knew nothing, how could his judgments be worth one’s while? For that reason, before lauding Lewis’s analysis or communication skills, the paper must note the knowledge of Lewis.
The first category of knowledge is the literature of the ages. Before discussing the depth, breadth and strains of this knowledge, there are two points about its nature.
First, the knowledge was pervasive. Lewis absorbed the literature. Words “learning” and “knowledge” are inadequate. Using those words in reference to Lewis’s immersion into the worlds of literature is almost like calling marriage “a systematic data entry process”; to read was to experience. (R.C.C.S.L. 22-23) Like experience, it was part of Lewis; it shaped him. In his Experiment in Criticism, Lewis penned,
“Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own… My own eyes are not enough for me. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or bee. In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself: and am never more myself than when I do.” (George Sayer Jack N/A)
The whole ‘being’ is transformed through reading; it is pervasive.
Second, this knowledge (or enlargement) was permanent. Lewis remembered everything he read. Art Lindsley records in his book, C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christ,
“Sometimes in his rooms at Oxford, Lewis would play a parlor game, asking a visitor to pull any book out of his extensive library and read aloud a few lines. Lewis would then proceed to quote the rest of the poetry or prose verbatim for pages.” (18-19)
Art Lindsley then continues with a few names and examples illustrating Lewis’s memory. (19-20) For brevity’s sake, this paper will simply concede the fact without contest (unlike one embarrassingly skeptical Rhodes Scholar, Selig) that, in fact, Lewis did remember “Yes, everything, Selig, even the most boring of texts.” (20) (R.C.C.S.L. 42) For Lewis, to read was to write on his mind with permanent ink.
With these points in mind, what did Lewis read? First, Lewis exhibited extraordinary depth in the Sixteenth Century. Gene Edward Veith wrote in Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis (a book analyzing C.S. Lewis’s literary criticisms), “Lewis spent a decade…poring over polemical tracts, political chronicles, and bad popular poetry, as well as, of course, works by great poets such as Sidney and Spenser.” (109) Veith later adds, “According to Professor Huttar,” who saw the register of books C.S. Lewis checked out from the Oxford Library, “Lewis appears to have essentially checked out the entire sixteenth-century collection.” (R.C.C.S.L. 121)
The erudition is obvious. As Professor Ryken accurately wrote, “His knowledge of the territory far surpasses that of his readers, though he never flaunts his superiority.” (R.C.C.S.L. 30) Within his sixty-five page introduction to his five-hundred-and-fifty-eight page book (excluding over a hundred pages of end notes) English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama, he describes major cultural themes with the ease and fullness of a flowing river. C.S. Lewis comfortably expounds humanism, Puritanism, magia, astrology, persecution, social change and jurisprudence and the relations between these topics in the context of the sixteenth-century, and their influences on literature. Lewis could even casually detail what Latin words obscure authors from specific ideological persuasions used in a certain context four hundred years ago. (E.L.S.C. 30) One of his pupils, Tynan, writes, “He could make you see the world through the eyes of a medieval poet as no other teacher could do. You felt like you had been inside Chaucer’s mind after talking to him.” (R.C.C.S.L. 40) Lewis once made the passing observation, “To judge between one ethos and another, it is necessary to have got inside both, and if literary history does not help us to do so it is a great waste of labour.” (E.L.S.C. 331) Regarding Sixteenth Century literature, Professor Lewis was a well immersed scholar.
Also, it should be noted that Lewis had greater breadth than the Sixteenth Century. Assistant Professor Michael W. Price made this important observation, “References to seventeenth-century writers appear across the full spectrum of Lewis’s writings, illustrating not only his familiarity with them but also the extent to which he had internalized them.” (R.C.C.S.L. 157) This is true for all writers. To illustrate this, in The Problem of Pain, Lewis quotes or references The Wind in the Willows, Wordsworth, Malory, Apocalypse, Ovid, Virgil, Aeschylus, D Ezekiel and Genesis in the span of two pages for the illumination of a single point. Of course, Lewis also quoted or referenced (or both) Scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Keats, Shakespeare, Sir James Jean, Hobbes, George MacDonald, Pascal, Traherne, Montaigne, St. Augustine, Hooker, Thomas Aquinas, Brother Lawrence, J. Wesley, Dr. Edwyn Bevan, N. P. Williams, William Law and von Hugel in The Problem of Pain.E In awe of Lewis’s literary diversity, Thomas L. Martin of Florida Atlantic University (editor of Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis) reported, “Indeed, not until I was immersed in the present project did I realize the breadth of his insight, insight that spans not merely a single author or period, but the entire scope of literary history.” (R.C.C.S.L. preface)
Finally, the readership of Lewis encompassed Christian and non-Christian religious material. He would naturally read both strains of literature. However, each seems to have received unique attention.
To start, C.S. Lewis purposefully exposed himself to the dictates and doctrines of various religions. Art Lindsay in C. S. Lewis’s Case for Christ commented,
“Even after he came to belief in God, calling himself ‘the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England,’ he took two years to sort out various competing religious claims, particularly between Eastern religious ideas (pantheism) and Christianity.” (16)
Thus his conversion to Christianity from atheism was, to an extent, scholarly. M Packer, writing a biography for the British Broadcasting Company, noted, “Lewis's conversion to Christianity was not a sudden experience. He always claimed it was logical and rational, not emotional.” (C.S. Lewis) Alan Jacobs wrote, “One thing does seem clear: he [Lewis] was right to describe his conversion as an almost purely intellectual one.” (Narnian130)
His writings evidence knowledge of various religions. Lewis spoke of doctrine when he wrote, “What is common to Zarathustra, Jeremiah, Socrates, Gautama, Christ and Marcus Aurelius, is something pretty substantial.” (T.P.P. 57) In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis quipped,
“If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own.” (19)
Lewis wrote:
“If a man will go into a library and spend a few days with the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, he will soon discover the massive unanimity of the practical reason in man. From the Babylonian Hymn to Samos, from the laws of Manu, the Book of the Dead, the Analects, the Stoics, the Platonists, from Australian aborigines and Redskins, he will collect the same triumphantly monotonous denunciations of oppression, murder, treachery and falsehood; the same injunctions of kindness to the aged, the young, and the weak, of almsgiving and impartiality and honesty.” (Lindsley C.S.L.C.C. 14)
Hopefully all readers will realize the meaning of ‘spend a few days with the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.’ As a note in passing, Lewis gave special attention to Hinduism and Christianity before judging the former inferior to the latter. (Surprised by Joy 347-348; C.S.L.C.C. 170-171; Mere Christianity 43-46)
Lewis’s Christian reading list was massive. Before his salvation, Lewis had read Chesterton, Spenser, Milton, Langland, Donne, Thomas Browne, George Herbert and George MacDonald. (Surprised by Joy 315-316) As already noted, quotes from or references to Scripture, Pascal, Traherne, Montaigne, St. Augustine, Hooker, Thomas Aquinas, Brother Lawrence, J. Wesley and von Hugel are found in The Problem of Pain. Lewis read various Christian authors of the Sixteenth Century from the poet William Dunbar to the preacher Henry Smith. There are many other writers, obviously, which evade this paper’s detention.
Experience was another aid to Lewis. For Lewis, ‘the subjective’ was a guide to truth. Events and personal investigations gave Lewis a unique deposit of information.
First, there were personal investigations; these regard one’s own nature, feelings, character, emotions and passions. When Lewis said the following, he was referring to this type of knowledge, “…moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience.” (Mere Christianity 123) Lewis’s experience with and investigations of a specific desire, Joy, is the theme, and its conclusion, the message of his small autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Lewis observed on page 262,
“What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.”
Second, Lewis endured varied external experiences. An enthusiastic biologist may talk forever about the inner life of oysters but the oyster (who has never read anything about oysters) fully grasps concepts the biologist could hardly imagine. Circumstance provides perception. Lewis endured WWI and the early death of his mother before he wrote The Problem of Pain. Lewis converted from atheism to Christianity before he wrote, Mere Christianity. Lewis was married and made a widower before he wrote his beauty, The Four Loves. Using both types of experience, Lewis penned in The Four Loves, “And surely St. Paul is right [about marriage]? If I may trust my experience, it is (within marriage as without) the practical and prudential cares of this world, and even the smallest and most prosaic of those cares, that are the great distraction.” (138) When Lewis viewed literature and religion, experience influenced his opinions.
Before continuing, when Lewis approached a topic, he brought his personal experiments, experiences, diverse, deep knowledge of literature and an unusually massive exposure to the beliefs of various world religions, including his own. Art Lindsley lauded, “Lewis had an enormous breadth and depth of knowledge.” (C.S.L.C.C. 17)
However, was the knowledge of Lewis sufficient for a true scholar and apologist? His literary knowledge was clearly sufficient to the scholars of his day. The Oxford University Press promised on the back cover of Lewis’s book, “All the contributors [to these ‘12 volumes’] are acknowledged authorities on their periods…” (E.L.S.C. back cover) According to Edward Veith, “...his contributions to Renaissance scholarship throughout his career, culminat[ed] in his appointment to the professorship Cambridge University designed especially for him, a chair in Medieval and Renaissance literature.” (R.C.C.S.L. 105) Cambridge University created a professorship for C.S. Lewis. To save time, this paper just agrees with Oxford and Cambridge: Lewis had the erudition of a scholar.
As apologist, Lewis’s task was to succinctly and convincingly assert Christian thought. Lewis was “an amateur” in the realm of theodicy not a theologian (T.P.P. preface); he was “…a very ordinary layman of the Church of England, not especially “high,” nor especially “low,” nor especially anything else.” (M.C. 6) In The Problem of Pain, Lewis wrote, “If any parts of the book are ‘original’, in the sense of being novel or unorthodox, they are so against my will and as a result of my ignorance.” (preface) In his classic books, he tried not to propose anything doctrinally ‘original’; in these two classic books, he merely presented and defended the common beliefs of Christians. (M.C. 7; T.P.P preface)
This task relies on a grasp of Christian doctrine and logic. From the information already provided in this paper, Lewis was clearly exposed to Christian doctrine; the question of logic and analysis is this paper’s next topic. For now, Lewis exhibited the knowledge of a promising scholar and apologist.

A young Brit arrived after a long journey to the house of his (soon to be) tutor. “‘Stop!’ was his tutor’s response to [the lad’s] casual remark that Surrey was much ‘wilder’ than he had anticipated. ‘What do you mean by wildness and what grounds had you for not expecting it?’” (Keefe, Carolyn Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis 42) During his years at Kirkpatrick’s, Lewis found that “[h]is every conversation with Kirkpatrick was subject to confrontation…His teacher insisted that all terms be defined and conclusions be supported with evidence.” (43)
This ruthless mental conditioning resulted in Lewis’s piercing analytical prowess. One of his students called it a ‘howitzer’! (43) Importantly, Lewis would turn this ‘howitzer’ on literature and religion, using it to discriminate, to assert and to observe.
Lewis had a “discriminating mind”. That means, in this paper, two things at once. First, Lewis could identify (or define) different elements. Second, Lewis could accurately juxtapose (or separate and contrast) these elements. Without this ability, no one can proceed to prove or disprove an argument; smothering ambiguity constantly triumphs.
An example of this skill in action is Lewis’s analysis of Sir Francis Bacon’s “apophthegmatic” style. In the book, Lewis first compares, “His earliest essays resemble essays by Montaigne about as much as a metallic-looking cactus raised on the edge of a desert resembles a whole country-side of forest, filled with light and shade, well stocked with game, and hard to get out of.” (E.L.S.C. 538) After noting that Bacon was without parent or progeny, he describes, “The cactus remains unique; interesting, curious, striking, worth going to see once, but sterile, inedible, cold and hard to the touch.” (E.L.S.C. 538) He incisively identifies Bacon’s style and juxtaposes it with Montaigne’s.

Assertion was another Lewis forte. Possessing an independent mind, Lewis did not shy from concluding contrary to the mainstream.
The first example is provided by Gene Edward Veith, then Professor of English at Concordia University-Wisconsin now Academic Dean at Patrick Henry College. To a friend, Lewis wrote, “I believe I have proved that the Renaissance never happened in England… Alternatively… that if it did, it had no importance!” (R.C.C.S.L. 105) Veith comments, “Such a sweeping generalization—breathtaking in its audacity and iconoclasm—exemplifies Lewis’s way with literary history.” (R.C.C.S.L. 105)
In his book, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama, Lewis wrote, “Our legend of the Renaissance is a Renaissance legend.” (E.L.S.C. 56) Lewis notes, “The more we look into the question, the harder we shall find it to believe that humanism had any power of encouraging or any wish to encourage, the literature that actually arose.” (E.L.S.C. 2, 19) He saw classicism as a “philistine movement; even an obscurantist movement.” (31) Lewis argued that humanists F opposed ideas (30-31), obscured the classics (28, 84-85), killed Latin (21) and ushered in aesthetically “vulgar” literature (24). When the Golden Age came, “Youth returns.” (E.L.C.S. 1) “Returns” does not imply that the Middle Ages lacked literary vitality before humanism; that youth of the Middle Ages is what, in Lewis’s reckoning, returned. Trying to be positive, Lewis writes, “…it remains true that we owe nearly all our Greeks, and many of our Latins, to the humanists: also, a prodigious advance in philology and textual criticism.” (E.L.S.C. 19, see also 32)
In a second example of the distinctness of his conclusions, Lewis came to the topic of marriage in one of his radio addresses. He proceeded to answer questions from which most would hide: “(1) Why should there be a head at all—why not equality? (2) Why should it be the man?” (Mere Christianity 102) Answering the first question, he said, “If marriage is permanent, one or other party must, in the last resort, have the power of deciding the family policy. You cannot have a permanent association without a constitution.” (ibid) Approaching his answer to the second, he carefully treads, “There must be something unnatural about the rule of wives over husbands, because the wives themselves are half ashamed of it and despise the husbands whom they rule.” (103) Lewis continues,
“The relations of the family to the outer world—what might be called its foreign policy—must depend, in the last resort, upon the man, because he always ought to be, and usually is, much more just to outsiders. (…) If your dog has bitten the child next door, or if your child has hurt the dog next door, which would you sooner have to deal with, the master of that house or the mistress?” (103)
His winsome manner should not distract attention from his rare courage. Lewis made ‘independent’, bold conclusions.
Lewis was also a superb observer. Like a sage, Lewis could paint an entire landscape. As one of his students noted, Lewis “possessed a Johnsonian power of turning knowledge into wisdom.” (R.C.C.S.L. 35)
In his literary criticism, Lewis distilled information into nuggets of wisdom; he saw the trees and described the forest. After discussing the ‘sinister’, ‘ferocious’, ‘demoniac’, ‘terrifying’ eldritch sense of humor (evident in Scotch, particularly Dunbar’s, poetry), Lewis soon commented, “It is apparently when terrors are over that they become too terrible to laugh at; while they are regnant they are too terrible to be taken with unrelieved gravity. There is nothing funny about Hitler now.” (E.L.S.C. 95) After noting the “sudden extinction” of the lovely, highly developed Scotch poetry, Lewis observes the chilling fact, “[a]n art, a whole civilization, may at any time slip through men’s fingers in a very few years and be gone beyond recovery. If we are alive when such a thing is happening we shall hardly notice it until too late; and it is most unlikely that we shall know its causes.” (E.L.S.C. 113)
The tendency continues in his Christian writings. Dealing with the natural loves (e.g. Eros) as supreme rulers, Lewis penned, “Love, having become a god, becomes a demon.” (The Four Loves 83) In Heaven, Lewis succinctly surmises, “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.” (The Four Loves 188) In Mere Christianity, he commented, “If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: If you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.” (39) Poking fun at himself, he observed, “No one is a coward at all points.” (Surprised by Joy 81) Setting up a talk on complex good, he quipped, “…you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, however you act, but it makes a difference to you whether you serve like Judas or like John.” (The Problem of Pain 111)
Before passing this point of Lewis as an observer, this paper shall note that Lewis’s wisdom was often the result of his reading. “in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself” When Lewis approaching a topic, he opens a chest brimming with the ideas of the centuries; he draws out of it sparkling nuggets of wisdom.
Before ending the discussion on C.S. Lewis’s analysis, two important points should be made. First, Lewis is not always (or, at least, necessarily) correct. There are certainly many different opinions. David L. Jeffrey believes, for instance, that Lewis’s “most notable instance of neglect” was his lack of appreciation and coverage of Chaucer. (R.C.C.S.L. 76) G Colin Manlove is disturbed that Lewis spent so much time on Chaucer and others (in comparison to his 'paucity' regarding Shakespeare). (R.C.C.S.L. 123) Art Lindsley, who (in contrast to Jeffrey) is not contradicted in a future chapter, disagrees with Lewis’s belief in God’s inclusiveness. (C.S.L.C.C. 171-174) The author of this paper disagrees with Lewis’s acceptance of macroevolution. (T.P.P. 72-73) Veith notes, “[O]ne of the greatest Renaissance scholars of the day… Dame Gardner, for all of her delight in Lewis’s approach to literary history, took him severely to task for minimizing the humanists (Green and Hooper 283).” (R.C.C.S.L. 108, 116)
Of course, it is not beyond possibility that Lewis could be the one in the wrong. Lewis himself admitted fallibility. In one of his debates at the Oxford Socratic Club over the years, Lewis agreed that he was wrong. (Lindsley C.S.L.C.C. 118) Lewis was “not an infallible guru.” (Lindsley C.S.L.C.C. 25)
Second, Lewis’s analysis was constantly levelheaded. It is unjust for one to define Lewis by the exceptions. That one debate Lewis lost was the only debate lost by Lewis over “a number of years… as an adviser and central voice at the Oxford Socratic Club.” (Lindsley C.S.L.C.C. 18) Harper’s noted,
“The point about reading C.S. Lewis is that he makes you sure, whatever you believe, that religion accepted or rejected means something extremely serious, demanding the entire energy of the mind.” (T.P.P front cover)
Michael W. Price wrote,
“Although Lewis’s tastes and tendencies, like Johnson’s, have certain weaknesses, his literary criticism, I predict, will remain valued for precisely its Johnsonian strengths: its sheer lucidity, breadth, and common sense.” (R.C.C.S.L. 158)
If Lewis was wrong in a particular, his error was in spite not the natural result of his analytical prowess.

Lewis enjoyed a wealth of knowledge; he made reasonable conclusions; but, one question remains: “How well did he present these conclusions?” The Washington Star wrote, “Practically no modern writer commands his special gifts of wit, fervor, reason and meaning.” (F.L. back cover) Lewis shared clear meaning with candor in beauty.
As his primary objective, Lewis presented a clear message. Lewis is always going ‘somewhere’ and he strives to bring his reader with him. His purpose was reader comprehension and retention. Two fundamental techniques were used.
First, Lewis chose words that were efficient and effective. Sentences are not cluttered with unneeded or imprecise words. Mr. Babbage notes “his rare ability to use exactly the right word in the right place…” (Lindsley C.S.L.C.C. 22)
Lewis’s power lies not in a few good lines but in the accumulation of sentence after sentence of utter clarity. Sometimes his succinct precision manifests in lines that are particularly breathtaking; but the real wonder is the fact that this clarity did not begin with or end in that startling example; it was just a shining nugget in a pile of gold. A short excerpt does not ‘do justice’ to ‘his rare ability to use exactly the right word in the right place’. The clear message is projected out from Lewis’s mind with succinct precision.
Second, Lewis’s simple analogies comfortably illustrate the ambiguous. They are neither awkward nor confusing. For example, he notes, “The Divine ‘goodness’ differs from ours, but it is not sheerly different: it differs from ours not as white from black but as a perfect circle from a child’s first attempt to draw a wheel.” (T.P.P. 30) Admonishing a balanced view of Eros, Lewis illustrates, “A plant must have roots below as well as sunlight above and roots must be grubby. Much of the grubbiness is clean dirt if only you will leave it in the garden and not keep on sprinkling it over the library table.” (F.L. 20) Lewis’s analogies were perfectly suited for his arguments; one book description read, “As with all that Professor Lewis wrote, the arguments are stimulating and the examples apt.” (www.Amazon.com)
Lewis presented his arguments with complete verbal precision; nonetheless, his analogies cast these truths in the light of every day life. With these two techniques, Lewis presented a clear message.
Furthermore, Lewis spoke this clear message with candor. First, Lewis was conversational. He allowed himself to write in the first and second persons. This is true in his BBC radio lectures (Mere Christianity), massive literary history, theodicy The Problem of Pain, and his work of fatherly wisdom, The Four Loves. In each book, Lewis is speaking.
Second, Lewis was open and honest. When Lewis gave his radio lecture on the topic of forgiveness, he quickly said, “…half of you already want to ask me, ‘I wonder how you’d feel about forgiving the Gustapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?’” Lewis replies:
“So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do—I can do precious little—I am telling you what Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find ‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.’” (M.C. 104)
His humility was refreshing.
Third, Lewis allows humor. Splashes of fairly dry humor lie within English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama; the humor is often intellectual. For instance, Lewis jibes,
“It is disputed whether the Castell of Labour (1503) is by him or no: but if it is not by Barclay it is by someone equally bad. The opening exhortation, ‘Subdue you to payne to rede this tretyse’ is fully justified.” (129)
Lewis notes,
“Sidney can hiss like a serpent (‘Sweet swelling lips well maist thou swell’), gobble like a turkey (‘Moddels such be wood globes’), and quack like a duck (‘But God wot, wot not what they mean’).” (E.L.S.C. 329)
“‘Who else,’ she [renaissance scholar Dame Helen Gardner] asked, ‘could have written a literary history that continually arouses delighted laughter!’” (R.C.C.S.L 108) For a last example, in The Four Loves, during his expounding of Need pleasures, Lewis wrote, “And, if you will forgive me for citing the most extreme example of all, have there not for most of us been moments (in a strange town) when the sight of the word gentlemen over a door has roused a joy almost worthy of celebration in verse?” (29) Clearly, Lewis ‘enjoys the ride.’
Lewis’s style was conversational; his humility was honest; his enthusiasm, jolly. In these ways, Lewis wrote with disarming candor.
All of these elements, once harmonized through a ‘poetic mind’, became beauty. The older Lewis grew the more beautiful his writing became. The Problem of Pain is primarily eloquent. The Four Loves is also poetic. Lewis wrote,
“If we cannot ‘practice the presence of God,’ it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like men who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches out his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. To know that one is dreaming is to be no longer perfectly asleep.” (192)
Again an example is inadequate; all the lines ‘shimmer in the light’ as the book flows through its thoughts like a babbling brook in a quiet meadow. It sustains throughout the poetic beauty of his eloquence and wisdom.
His succinct precision communicated a clear message; his candor made his audience trust him; the flowering of his poetic eloquence gave his wise conclusions added beauty. When the Manchester Guardian reviewed one of his works, it made the observation, “Learning and life, scholarship and raciness, are not easily or often combined. But Mr. Lewis does it.” (C.S.L.A.M.C. 129)
In summary, Lewis was a great scholar, analyzer and communicator. In Christianity and literature, he absorbed an enormous mass of information; he turned this ‘knowledge into wisdom’; and, he communicated these insights with singular skill. Lewis researched, synthesized and delivered.
Perhaps these characteristics help explain his remarkable influence and popularity. As Times Literary Supplement (London) notes, “For the last thirty years of his life no other Christian writer in this century had such an influence on the general reading public as C.S. Lewis.” (Lewissociety.org © 2006) As Art Lindsley observes, “A recent poll of Christianity Today readers found that the book (other than the Bible) that has most influenced their lives was C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity.” (C.S.L.C.C.15) In her broadcast on the BBC, Anne Atkins lauded,
“His satire made him popular, his science fiction was well received, his broadcasts are still revered, his literary criticism remains an authority on courtly love, his essays sell as well today as ever [repeats the word “ever” in broadcast], he wrote poetry derivative of Anglo-Saxon, and every Sunday in some pulpit in the country his pithy theological insights are read out as the most incisive [replaces “most incisive” with “best available” in her broadcast].” [Thought of the Day 1 Dec 2006]
Onward marches Lewis’s literary legend.



End-Notes
A: Thus refers to the belief that there are “Three Lewis’s”: scholar, apologist and fantasy writer.
B: All of those books were found for sale on a single web-site.
C: This paper will be generally constrained to the realm of Lewis’s literary criticism and apologetics.
D: Lewis might appreciate the fact if it were noted that Lewis does not believe the manuscript is correctly attributed. Lewis wrote, “A Greek fragment attributed, but improbably, to Aeschylus, tells us of earth, sea, and mountain shaking beneath the ‘dread eye of their Master’.” (T.P.P. 8) Moreover, this casual sentence shows another example of unusual knowledge – no, not unusual for the scholar, but certainly unusual for anyone who is not a scholar.
E: MacDonald is excluded from this list because he was listed in the previous list. This paper does not attempt to explain which authors were read due to their Christian content.
F: “Humanism, in the only sense I shall give to the word, is more easily defined [than Puritanism]. By a humanist I mean one who taught, or learned, or at least strongly favoured, Greek and the new kind of Latin; and by humanism, the critical principles and critical outlook which ordinarily went with these studies. Humanism is in fact the first form of classicism.” (E.L.S.C. 18)
G: In specific areas, Lewis believes that Chaucer’s influence is over-rated; he gives firm rationale. Lewis believed that Chaucer’s style was not all inclusive: it had strength (in creating informal personalities – which Dunbar never had) and weakness (in exultant epic energy – which Dunbar resoundingly mastered): “He [Dunbar] lacks what is best in Chaucer and Chaucer lacks what is best in him.” (E.L.S.C. 97)
But let it be clear: Professor Lewis has a high opinion of Chaucer. Lewis pronounced, “We have greater stories in verse [than Squire Meldrum]; perhaps none, even in Chaucer, more completely successful.” (E.L.S.C. 103) Lewis wrote, “They are as far below Lydgate as Lydgate is below Chaucer…” (127) Lewis lauded, “With all its faults this work [Astrophel and Stella] towers above everything that had been done in poetry, south of the Tweed, since Chaucer died.” (329)
Laymen, if not scholars, need critics to give (in specific) what one’s opinion of Chaucer should be (with rationale) and the exactly how Lewis deviated from that standard.

Abbreviations
C.S.L.C.C. C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christ
E.L.S.C. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama
Narnian The Narnian : the life and imagination of C.S. Lewis
R.C.C.S.L. Reading the Classics with C.S. Lewis
Surprised by Joy Surprised by Joy, The Shape of My Early Life
T.P.P. The Problem of Pain

Sources
Atkins, Anne Thought for the Day 1 December 2005 BBC (online transcript) http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought/documents/t20051201.shtml
Edwards, Dr. Bruce L. C. S. Lewis: A Modest Literary Biography (online) http://cslewis.drzeus.net/bio/literarybio.html
[Note: The web site was copyright © 1994-2006 John Visser all rights reserved.]

Jacobs, Alan. The Narnian : the life and imagination of C.S. Lewis HarperSanFrancisco, © 2005. 1st ed.

lewissociety.org “Your Invitation to Join the C. S. Lewis of California:” © 2007

Lewis, C.S. (author) Wilson, F.P. & Dobrée, Bonamy. (editors) English Literature in the Sixteenth Century excluding Drama Oxford University Press (in Great Britain) Pub: 1968 (original publishing 1954)

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity Collier Books MacMillan Publishing Company: New York. Pub: 1960

Lewis, C.S. Surprised by Joy, (The Shape of My Early Life) 1986 Phoenix Press Walker and Company: New York

Lewis, C.S. The Four Loves Harcourt, Brace and Company: New York
[Note: There is a “© 1960 by Helen Joy Lewis”, however, the page with the date of publication is no longer in the book. Being old and worn, it is possible that it really is from 1960. The oldest date on the first page of this library book is penciled “8/30/61”.]

Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain HarperCollins Publishers: New York, NY pub: 2000

Lindsley, Art. C.S. Lewis’s Case for Christ (Insights from Reason, Imagination and Faith) IVP Books An Imprint of InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove Illinois Pub: 2005 (and © 2005 Art Lindsley)

Martin, Thomas L. (editor) Reading the Classics with C. S. Lewis © 2000 Thomas L. Martin Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Book House Company Grand Rapids, MI Paternoster Press Carlisle, Cumbria United Kingdom
… Ryken, Leland Chapter 1: “Reading Literature with C.S. Lewis” 17-31
… Keefe, Carolyn Chapter 2: “In the Tutorial and Lecture Hall” 32-51
… Jeffrey, David Lyle Chapter 4: “Medieval Literature” 72-86
… Veith, Gene Edward Chapter 6: “Renaissance” 105-122
…Manlove, Colin Chapter 7: “Shakespeare” 123-139

Olsen, Ted., Apologetics: C.S. Lewis, (The atheist scholar who became an Anglican, an apologist, and a patron saint of Christians everywhere.) Christianity Today Christian History & Biography January 1, 2000 URL: http://ctlibrary.com/4401

Packer, M. C. S. Lewis BBC Religion & Ethics (online) http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/people/cslewis_print.html

Sayer, George. Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis 1994 Crossway Books (Rev. ed. of: Jack: C.S. Lewis and his times. 1st ed. 1988.) Accessed via books.google.com

Wellman, Sam. C. S. Lewis (Author of Mere Christianity) Barbour Publishing, Inc. Uhrichsville, Ohio © 1997 www.barbourbooks.com