Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Canto)

While omissions in a short volume such as this are inevitable, it's nevertheless interesting, sometimes surprising to see what Lewis chooses to comment on versus what he chooses to leave out. The contents and index are available on Amazon, so I won't litter this review with the details. But do take a look at the TOC/index to make sure what you're looking for is here! Nevertheless, Lewis's writing is remarkably clear and his analysis is insightful and always interesting. A very worthwhile collection!

Recommended for the reader who wants to go below the surface of Chaucer, Dante, Milton, et. al., or just gain greater insight to the Medieval world view. Lewis explains their world as they saw it, so the modern reader can understand both what is written and what it meant to readers then. He takes you inside their world, so we can live what they experienced.

A better survey book would be Lewis' "The Discarded Image: an Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature." (Canto: 1964)

Like nearly all of those books which consist of essays gathered and published only after the author's death, this particular collection is a bit uneven. By this I mean not merely that some pieces are better than others, but that they are of very different sorts. Some are written for those (like myself) who know very little about Medieval culture and who need to be instructed. "Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages" is of this type. (Lewis also covers this material in more depth in The Discarded Image, though it's a bit easier reading and a little less intimidating here.) The same is also true of his biographical essay on "Edmund Spenser": you can read (and enjoy) the essay without having read one word of Spenser.

Other essays are much more detailed and are really aimed at the specialist. Lewis' several essays on Dante are of this sort: they are characterized by a marked lack of translation from the Italian (or Anglo-Saxon or Latin or . . . ). I suspect that to other specialists, these would be interesting and engaging. I'm no such specialist, and can't judge them from that perspective. I certainly found them to be informative, especially if you consider that nearly all of what Lewis had to say was, as they say, "information to me". If you're interested in Lewis for apologetic or theological reasons, these essays will open your eyes to what Lewis himself saw as the center of his career -- but even there, I would probably recommend starting with The Discarded Image or A Preface to Paradise Lost. Both of those are more disputational in nature (if much less so than his overtly theological works), and hence more likely to hold a dabbler's interest.

Lewis's fame as a writer of Christian apologetics, fantasy, and science fiction is such that it's easy to forget his day job: professor of medieval literature first at Oxford then Cambridge.

Although his professional output was fairly modest in quantity, in quality it enjoys a high reputation. His longer works include "The Allegory of Love", "English Literature in the Sixteenth Century", "Studies in Words", and "The Discarded Image". In addition to these, he also wrote a number of short works, which are published in this volume. To aid readers, I've listed the table of contents below:

Preface (by Walter Hooper)

"De Audiendis Poetis

"The Genesis of a Medieval Book"

"Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages"

"Dante's Similes"

"Imagery in the Last Eleven Cantos of Dante's Comedy"

"Dante's Statius"

"The Morte Darthur"

"Tasso"

"Edmund Spenser, 1552-99"

"On Reading the Faerie Queene"

"Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser"

"Spenser's Cruel Cupid"

"Genius and Genius"

"A Note on Comus"

Additional Editorial Notes

Index

None of these works are available in any other in-print collection (unusual for Lewis - his other shorter works have been collected multiple times in a variety of overlapping collections). As such, for those interested in the subject matter, this collection is highly recommended.

A second important collection of Lewis's writings as a literary critic is "Selected Literary Essays", which unfortunately is out of print and very hard to find. Another such collection to consider, (largely concerned with the science fiction and fantasy genres), is "On Stories, and Other Essays". That work is readily available.

Finally, those with a general interest in Lewis's shorter works may also want to get "Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces", which, as of the time of this writing, is available from Amazon UK but not Amazon US. That collection consists of about 130 short works by Lewis. While the collection centers around his writings on Christianity, it also includes a number of works of literary criticism, including all the works in "Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories".

This posthumous collection of Lewis papers provides eclectic discussions of people and books that come under the category of medieval and renaissance literature. Each chapter was originally given as a speech, with most created for the medieval specialist, not the general reader, so the target audience is somewhat narrow. Enjoyable reading if this is your field of interest.