English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama

Oxford History of English Literature #5

by C.S. Lewis

C. S. Lewis offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry of one of the most consequential periods in world history, providing deep insight into some of the greatest writers of the age, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, William Tyndale, John Knox, Dr. Johnson, Richard Hooker, Hugh Latimer, Christopher Marlowe, John Donne, and Thomas Cranmer.

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century is an invigorating overview of English literature from the Norman Conquest through the mid-seventeenth century from one of the greatest public intellectuals of the modern age. In this wise, distinctive collection, C. S. Lewis expounds on the profound impact prose and poetry had on both British intellectual life and his own critical thinking and writing, demonstrated in his deep reflections and essays.

This incisive work is essential for any serious literature scholar, intellectual Anglophile, or C. S. Lewis fan.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Literature, Poetry, Classics, Writing

1003 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1944

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Clive Staples Lewis 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. 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 Mere Christianity, 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 been transformed into three major motion pictures.

Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman.
W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]

Reviews

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I struggled to read this on Kindle and bought the hardcover and used it along with the audio.

A good portion was out of my reach but I did pick up a way of reading and looking at literature from Lewis. His attitude and judgments were helpful, the osmosis of sitting under a master.

It was quite enjoyable on audio with John Lee’s voice and I anticipate returning to this again when I grow up more.

I am quite ecstatic that I am getting closer to reading all Lewis’s books. This was the one I wasn’t sure I would get to.

[A.E. Reiff · Rating 5 out of 5]

It may be exaggeration that I recognize half the names and references after 50 years living with the subject. Who can count? It made me remember classes I took with Rhodes Dunlap at Iowa, the first Rhodes scholar from Rice University (1931), a sometime student of Lewis at Oxford, who edited the Oxford edition of the poems of Thomas Carew. C. S. Lewis became a fellow of Magdalen College in 1925, as did Tolkien at Pembroke College that same year. I wanted to study with Lewis but by the time I entered graduate school in 1964 he was dead a year. He anyway hated Americans. Coming as close as I did to Lewis with Rhodes Dunlap was notable on several fronts. Behind the desk in his office was a large glass bookcase with all old editions of the poets. Prophetic in themselves. This was a man of some kindness, the right approach for me, since I had no title to anything except the future. But the future is here already, so I read with understanding.

Lewis is surprisingly vacuous when he establishes the most radical points but not with merely quotable sources. One can quote the whole book. The only sound bites are his throw away lines like "the canals on Mars vanished when we got stronger lenses" 64 [but reappeared in greater fantasy yet of the watershed land forms on Mars], "they talk something like angels and something like sailors and stable-boys" 62 "The universe itself is a constitutional monarchy. The Almighty Himself repudiates the sort of sovereignty that Tyndale thinks fit for Henry VIII." 49

I was once approached by a woman who wanted me to read and edit her manuscript on native plants. I told her I was unwilling, but would indeed gossip with her about them. She left in a pout. But that is what I want and get from Lewis, a good gossip about "the great literature of the fifteen-eighties and nineties... which humanism...would have prevented if it could, but failed to prevent because THE HIGH TIDE OF NATIVE TALENT WAS THEN TOO STRONG FOR IT" 19. I was so infinitely and natively attracted to these writers that to study them always seemed a Godsend, to get paid, to be able to live, to spend every moment to understand! And after a doctorate was granted, even though I knew less than before, the whole thing sat over its cook fire while I and my Frank waited round our caldron. This is because I took up at the beginning Spenser and allegory, the metaphysicals and grammarians, the propagandists and the crazed prose stylists like loving hurricanes and volcanoes.

Lewis was always afflicted with devoted Americans. In that first semester at Iowa, along with Dr. Dunlap, descriptive bibliography was mandated with Warner Barnes, which required at the end of term a bibliography. I there described and annotated all the Lewis primary works, all the works about him and all the magazine and journal articles as well. Some fifty pages. At that time, so close to his death in '63, no such work had appeared; Barnes flipped over it and gave me a job collating on the Mark Twain Project. He later got me a TA at Texas where he had returned at that time. So this Elizabethan gossip has benefited me well.

I can hear Rhodes Dunlap in Sidney's voice, fool, look in your heart and write, then switching to Donne and complaining about loving and writing about it in whining poetry. Once, a few years later he did me another good turn when I somehow got stuck working for NASA to put in order and audit all their contracts for the previous ten years. I lasted three days but came away with the Lunar Orbiter photographs before they were retouched and Mariner 9, but then sought refuge at the Folger Shakespeare Library, to which I only gained admission as a reader by the mention of Dr. Dunlap's name. He surprised me on our last meeting when I told him I was off to teach at a black college in the south. He asked if I would return, as if he would like that. But I said, unfortunately, sadly, no. But I took with me the impression of him checking books out of the library where I would see him at the counter. Where I scrawled haphazardly, and there began the AE, he carefully and neatly filled every letter. I saw this more than once and it always astounded me. But then he collated every page of Carew!

I say all this to give a sense of what it must be like to take firsts in every level of study at Oxford as Lewis did. The punctiliousness and grasp of ideas along with that wit is wonderful. So in enjoying the 16th century it is all the more warming that Lewis' first statement of the Elizabethans has to do with the Platonism where the worlds of idea and archetype break through, where the invisible is ineffable, if known, but can be said to be known by the unknown, flesh by the spirit. The first essence of the Elizabethan he says was this explosion of fantasy, paradox and color which for the next century became an imaginative "efflorescence of forbidden or phantasmal arts" (6) where "Bercilak resumes his severed head" [Sir Gawain and the Green Knight] (8).

Theologues had better dream of power to bring this invisible realm to bear on the political. Knowledge for the sake of power preoccupied Bacon, Paracelsus, Dee, Machiavelli and all European thought. In their megalomania they thought Soul power justified anything because it was "being in proportion superior to the world." Thus they ordered the extinction. Read this either as extinction of the invisible world or of the visible. Why can't the two coexist? Why must they annihilate each other? It is a theological question. You would not believe that the whole purpose of science is to manifest this Platonic spiritual world to the physical, filtered always through its megalomania for power. This purpose of science would call itself the whole purpose of existence. You would not believe that even if I said it in Opiomes, or in HistoPossum, or in the Severed Head. So I won't. If there are three terms, the visible, the invisible, the megalomania, there is also a fourth, the true man who opposes supernatural coitus, cosmic intercourse. I think it is our purpose to find him. I am looking http://apoeticalreadingofthepsalmsofd....

That Lewis is less a humanist is warranted by the first ten pages of 16th but also in the war between the humanists and the schoolmen 17f and the puritans, John Colet, rediscovered Homer, bishops at bowls: "in the field of philosophy humanism must be regarded, quite frankly, as a Philistine movement: even an obscurantist movement 31...they introduced a subtle falsity of approach to them from which we took centuries to recover." But no less do we recover from the "catastrophic conversion" of the pietist puritan mind that enters into "the assumption, unemphasized because it is unquestioned, that every event, every natural fact, and every institution, is rooted in the supernatural." 38 This was the 16th century at will and at large and out of it he sees the new villain or the new villainy (44) which introduces a meditation on law which evolved in the 16th century toward absolutism, from the divine right of kings to absolute sovereignty of the state, but "the king is under the law because it is the law that makes him king" 48. His consideration of pre-existing law that "creates and is not created by, the State" 47 bespeaks of natural law, much discarded in modern courses. This keeping of 'unwritten law and custom" is the real sovereign entity, however overthrown by the Machiavel and Tamburlaine, two sources of the rebel, the first a liar and the second a megalomaniac, perfect pictures of what passes now as leaders of government who everybody believes has their best interest at heart. He means it as a compliment that "a Protestant may be Thomistic, a humanist may be a Papist, a scientist may be a magician, a skeptic may be an astrologer" 63. He sees it as function of the cross currents then, however naivete now sees it as a dissociation. Indeed dissociation is now the singlemost paramount reality, all macro and micro alters in the lineup of myth making made prosperous in scientific basements http://insightstatutes.blogspot.com/2.... The overwriting of neural linguistic programming makes his take on governance prophetic of the emergence of a state that seals the minds of its citizens while it preaches their freedom.

The thing that gets me about the 16th century is this worlds within worlds. So once I may have wanted to bring down the establishment, a la hurricane carter medici, but it was a local thing, confined to certain customs, like racism say, or prejudice against animals, confined to an issue, but now, with the 16th century wind at the back it's the whole enchilada, I mean the avocado and the cheese, the taco and the nacho, like cooks in the world first fast food kitchen have prepared this meal for consumption and I want to overturn the serving cart, for the meal is already cooked, I want with Tamerlane or Coriolane or Dunsinane to bring the woods to bear, I want this to be understood, the whole enchil: and that's just chapter one
:http://www.scribd.com/doc/63893086/Bu...
Chapter two came in the hand of Augusto T. at Space Malebolge
https://sites.google.com/view/a-neon-...

II.

Lewis has variable affection for Spenser I think, but the greatest for Sidney, so that is useful to me since I have felt the opposite. Of Spenser he allows more "commerce than Sidney's with our subconscious and semi-conscious minds; probes deeper. 347 Spenser's historical allegory got him in trouble with King James in 1596 who protested that the character of Duessa was untrue to Mary Queen of Scots however. This historical myth structure, "a vast, invented structure which other men could walk all round and in and out of for four centuries" 352 embodied "a more or less agreed mythology and allegory" that provided the forms with which he had to work. Spenser tuned to past forms of emblem, pageant, especially in that "Cambridge in his day was certainly a center of Puritanism, so that it is said he was the greatest of the Puritan poets of those two hundred years.

Lewis calls his a Platonized Protestantism more generally and with the time a syncretist, with Sidney and Shakespeare, who likewise held to this body of "common knowledge" that was not original thought. "Spenser expected his readers to find in it not his philosophy but their own experience--everyone's experience--loosened from its particular contexts by the universalizing power of allegory." 387 That is "his business was to embody in moving images the common wisdom."386 So whether Puritan or Protestant it was Platonic, for "Plato's thought is at bottom otherwordly, pessimistic, and ascetic, far more ascetic than Protestantism. This Platonism touches the allegory, for "in the present life it is the reminders of Beauty that especially inflame us" 377 in this fusion of medieval allegory and romantic epic of Italy" important to consider when in "allegory neither strictly religious nor strictly erotic but universal, every part of the poet's experience can be brought in." 380 Thus "it is in Spenser that the myth of the visionary princess effectively enters modern literature." The way this works in Platonism is "that every inferior good attracts us only by being an image of the single real good. The false Florimell attracts by being like the true, the true Florimell by being like Beauty itself." 382 The FQ is filled with false and true, shrines and anti-shrines to this end. "Earthly glory would never have moved us but by being a shadow or idolon of the Divine Glory, in which we are called to participate." 382

The coinage of these reflections, embodiments and antitheses is meant to show ourselves what we are, the self revealed in the literary allegory of the form, so the "Eros religion, the thirst of the soul for the Perfection beyond the created universe" 383 explains the mechanism of the allegory's work upon the reader, for "the soul cannot know her true aim till she has achieved it. The seeker must advance, with the possibility at each step of error, beyond the false Florimells to the true, and beyond the true Florimell to the Glory." This could be seen as a deeply mystical purpose. It sounds awfully like Charles Williams which explains the affinity with Lewis. In Platonism the natural universe is a world of shadows, "of Helens false as Spenser's false Florimell" into which the soul has come "only because she has lost her wings in a better place" so "the life of wisdom, while we are here, is a practice or exercise of death." 386

The syncretism joining these ideas to Protestantism was part of the common knowledge of that time that incorporated predestination and total depravity too. The philosophical and iconographic supersedes the historical allegory, but the historical ties the Platonism to its time and place, to Elizabeth, Calvinism, Jerusalem. "Sensual temptation, frivolous gallantry, the imprisonment and frustration of long, serious, and self-condemned passions, happy love, and religious melancholy... "All the states become people or places in that country" 380. Thus every part of the poet's experience is brought in. These are the reminders of Beauty that enflame us. As he says, "the vision of the Divine Wisdom is not purely a bookish conception" 377, it is much more. "the lady the lover sees his potential and more beautiful self" 375

These Platonisms are important in Spenser's Hymn of Love and Hymn of Beauty. Plato's "Form of beauty, the supercelestial Venus, the model from which the Creator drew the visible universe" is expanded by Ficino, whose "First Venus is the Angelic Mind considered in its contemplation of Divine Beauty. His Second is the generative power in the Anima Mundi (a being inferior to the angels." This illustrates nicely the Platonic shadow and reflection for the "Second Venus endeavors to procreate material things in the image of the Divine Beauty." 375 So, as said, in the lady the lover sees his potential and more beautiful self. This more or less agreed upon mythology and allegory pours out in Spenser, in allegory of several kinds the vast invented structure men walked around for four hundred years. And simply, if all this is false when weighed against the tov of the True, then what we have here is truly amazing.

There is a continuation of Platonism in the review of Thomas Hooker: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lewis in his don mode. a look at Scotland and England in that era and the literature that came out. Plus the influences that went into it.

An interesting look at the era, with its changes in politics, and religion, and science. Some of which are grossly distorted in the pop cultural view. He dislikes the term Rennaissance, because it's been so corrupted you can hardly use it to mean the recovery of (some) ancient Latin and Greek works, and even on that topic, he's rather firm on the limits of the benefits.

And its literature. How the bad late medieval English work became the Drab era, of regular meter and trim, neat poems with little poetical splendour, and how suddenly the Golden style erupted. By Golden, he meant, not good, but innocent. The writers had mastered the art of writing meter and poetical imagery; there was nothing more to be done than take obvious poetical topics, and write beautiful poetry with obvious poetic imagery. Metaphysical poetry arose in part because after a period of this, you start looking for more variety. But this is the field of Shakespeare's poems, Marlowe's, Spenser's, Sidney's and so many of the minor ones.

Also a look at Scottish literature which was in blazing splendor at the start of the era, and lost its touch by the end.

Definitely worth looking at for anyone who wants to read more of the era than Shakespeare's plays.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, now I am a full Lewis fan.

This book is one of those books you keep from being a snob because you always read the classics. Not that it isn't great, but so much fact and so many authors I don't know and have no desire to read.

So what are the gems?

The first chapter is probably the best for anyone to read. He gives you the picture of the Reformation that questions a great deal reformed types tend to think. "The process whereby 'faith and works' become a stock gag in the commercial theatre is characteristic of that whole tragic farce which we call the history of the Reformation. The theological questions really at issue have no significance, except on a certain level, a high level, of the spiritual life; they could have been fruitfully debated only between mature and saintly disputants in close privacy and at boundless leisure. ... In fact, however, these questions were raised at a moment when they immediately became embittered and entangled with a whole complex of matters theologically irrelevant, and therefore attracted teh fatal attention both of government and the mob. ... It was as if men were set to conduct a metaphysical argument at a fair, in competition or (worse still) forced collaboration with the cheapjacks and the round-abouts, under the eyes of an armed and vigilant police force who frequently changed sides."

Lewis maintains a charity that should continued to be encouraged, but you can tell he is protestant over and against catholic (but he does NOT take Tyndale over against More, and insists More is a saint) and Anglican over Puritan (though he grants that Martin's tracts were justly provoked). He doesn't like Calvin much and considers the fervor he inspired (somewhat justly though) as much like Marxist fervor.

Lewis clearly loves Hooker and for that reason I want to read the judicious and charitable author. Other good bits are his surprisingly understandable discussions of Scottish poets, Douglas and Dunbar, as well as his discussion of religious texts, Sir Philip Sidney, Shakespeare's Sonnets, and Marlowe and Chapman's joint effort Hero and Leander. Spenser he writes much on, but I think better elsewhere.

There is less than I thought of Lewis saying, "Don't read this: it's no good," but a lot of the drag is just the minor authors who I would never read anyway. Grand, but rightly OHEL.

*Postscript: I just re-read the bits on Spenser, or at least the bits on Faerie Queene. This is kind of the summa of everything Lewis had said on Spenser elsewhere, and though I wouldn't make this the first reading of Lewis on that particular book (go to Allegory of Love, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Lit, and then Spenser's Images), it has some invaluable comments:
[383] "We must not, of course, forget that Gloriana is also Queen Elizabeth. This was much less chilling and shocking to the sixteenth century than it is to us. Quite apart from any prudent desire to flatter his prince (in an age when flattery had a ceremonial element in it) or from any romantic loyalty which he may have felt and probably did feel as an individual, Spenser knew that even outside poetry all reigning sovereigns were ex officio viceregents and images of God. No orthodox person doubted that in this sense Elizabeth was 'an idole' of the divine magnificence. It is also easy to misunderstand the sentence 'Gloriana is Elizabeth'. She is Elizabeth in a sense which does not prevent Belphoebe from also being Elizabeth nor Elizabeth from being also a remote, unborn descendant of Arthegall and [384] Britomart who are contemporaries of Gloiana."

[387] "That is why it is at one so true and so misleading to call his poetry dream-like; its images have the violent clarity and precision which we often find in actual dreams, but not the dimness and evasiveness which the overtones of the word dream-like (based more on waking reverie than real dreaming) usually call up. These images are not founded on but merely festooned with, philosophical conceptions."

[391] "he is not the poet of passions but of moods. I use that word to mean those prolonged states of the 'inner weather' which may colour our world for a week or even a month. That is what Spenser does best. In reading him we are reminded not of falling in love but of being in love; not of the moment which brought despair but of the despair which followed it; not of our sudden surrenders to temptation but of our habitual vices; not of religious conversion but of the religious life. Despite the apparent remoteness of his scenes, he is, far more than the dramatists, the poet of ordinary life, of the thing that goes on. Few of us have been in Lear's situation or Hamlet's: the houses and bowers and gardens of the Faerie Queene, both good and evil, are always at hand."

[392] "No poet, I think, was ever less like an Existentialist. He discovered early what things he valued, and there is no sign that his allegiance ever wavered."

[Jenny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is perhaps the most intimidating book I've ever picked up, and it is utterly impossible to do justice to it in a short review. (Or even a long one.) So, a few impressions, upon finishing--

-I desperately wish that I had a more solid grounding in 16th Century Literature. Beyond Shakespeare, Spencer, and Donne, I'd only read a handful of the authors included in this this volume. Lewis's analysis of their work made me want to return to their poetry. But I didn't come away with many new authors I wanted to explore--the sheer volume of unfamiliar names titles was overwhelming. Lewis writes as if his readers have the same familiarity with the literature of the era as he does, making sections of the book a very difficult slog.

-I also wish that this volume didn't exclude drama. I would have loved to read more of Lewis's analysis of Shakespeare's works.

-Before reading this, I hadn't considered just how important choosing the right translation of a classic work is (because no matter how inspired, I will not be learning enough Latin and Greek to ever attempt Homer or Virgil in their original languages). Lewis's critique of different translators (and the schools of thought that nurtured them) was fascinating and is making me re-think some of the books on my shelves.

-As much as I delighted in reading Lewis's praise of noteworthy prose and gorgeous poetry, I will confess to finding just as much enjoyment in his criticism. "There are many obscure passages. Within a convention which affects obscurity it is not always possible to say which are intended and which result from mere incompetence," and other equally amusing skewerings help to keep a book that could easily become dry and overly academic more accessible and enjoyable.

-Lastly: I have never been so impressed and overwhelmed by a bibliography. Ninety-one of the book's 696 pages are bibliography. With his towering reputation as a Christian author and apologist, Lewis's incredible scholarship is often overlooked. He may have dreaded working on this book (he referred to it as "OHEL" which I will confess to gleefully doing as well), but his thoroughness and expertise are undeniable.

I doubt that I will read it again from cover to cover, but I am glad to have done it, and will likely return to it in bits and pieces as I introduce my girls to this period in literary history.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel like Lewis deserves a round of applause for finishing this book: it took him years and was a sore trial to him, and the mountains of writing he had to read and then discuss intelligently boggle the mind. About a third of the way through, he hit an era of deeply mediocre poets and got a little unfiltered. “Very, very bad.” “Also very bad.” “But in general the work is disastrous: just not bad enough to be harmless to public taste.” I also feel like I might deserve applause because I read all 558 pages (plus reference end matter!) before it is due back on 2/03.

But it would be unfair to make it sound like everything here is terrible, because a lot of this was *wonderful.* I met piles of authors I need to go read now because they sound amazing.

Lewis’s superpower is to articulate what is uniquely excellent about an author and worthy of your interest. He has, as always, his own perspective—I would not want to rely on him as a sole authority, but he’s a great source to get you started. Also, I am not as educated as he thinks I am. It would have been helpful if he had not included untranslated quotes in French, Latin, and Greek! At one point he was all, “To the modern reader, whose Latin is better than his medieval Scots…” and that is just a bold assumption.

At several points I spotted exactly where Lewis found something that wound up in Narnia. Very gratifying.

Also, one of my more embarrassing teenage moments was when I conflated satires—the mocking writing form—with satyrs, the spicy faun dudes. Political satyrs, y’all. I learned in this book that there was a whole stream of scholarship in the 1500s that also thought they were related! John Donne himself wrote satires intentionally satyr-like. I FEEL AFFIRMED.

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a subjective, idiosyncratic, but nevertheless very engaging survey of sixteenth-century English literature (including Scotland). Given the range of material, even at the length of this book Lewis is mostly engaging in high-level mapping, rarely delving deeply into anyone's corpus. Even the figures to whom he does devote significant space, notably Spenser and Sidney, are dealt with superficially. To be fair, the target audience for this book would have been (I think) students, so deep and complex readings are not its goal. And the readings it does provide are consistently thoughtful and often amusing. Lewis is a lively writer, not particularly concerned with sounding dustily academic, so vivid imagery and judgements crop up frequently--and sometimes very amusingly. One can rarely laugh out loud at recent literary criticism--at least, not because the author has deliberately courted humour. Even when he's not deliberately being funny, he commands the reader's attention, and even when his opinions seem unsound (e.g. in his rationalization of using "papist" to describe the Catholic Church--ostensibly because calling it the Catholic Church concedes too much in one direction while calling it the Roman Catholic Church concedes too much in another--how that justifies "papist" as more neutral escapes me) they are always expressed with vivacity and force. Anyone seriously interested in the literature of the period will need to consult more recent scholarship, but anyone interested in a delightfully-written (if dated) overview can hardly do better than this volume.

[Peter Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insane book, goes way harder than it had to

[Lynnette · Rating 4 out of 5]

There was definitely a point I reached while reading this book that I thought it wasn’t worth finishing even though it’d be missing from my goal of reading all of C.S. Lewis’s books. But I got back into it and I’m glad I made it. The average Christian probably doesn’t get to see this side of Lewis. He was a master in his field. Not only would he have had to read well over a thousand works to write this volume, but he also would have to be able to compare and contrast works and sum up an entire writer’s career in just a few words. His ability to see the grand scope of the history of English literature and still illuminate the little important details is amazing. He also realized not everyone who would be reading it would be a master in his field. It is scholarly level but inclusive of the every day man. He’s funny, interesting, and really makes you want to read more works from that era. Would I read it again… Only some parts as a fantastic reference. If I ever decide to get back into poetry and reread Spenser, Herbert, Donne, and Shakespeare, I would definitely revisit this book. I also thought the chapter on interpreting the Bible into English was phenomenal. So often we hear about the lives of the men, not the work. They invented many words like lovingkindness and scapegoat and set the standard for interpreting texts into English. Their work was key in the progress and development not just of the Christian’s faith but also the English language. Overall, a difficult read for the average person, but still learned a lot.

[Beth Oshiki]

I am reading the Kindle version of this book, so I can't tell you what page I am on, but he's talking about a Scottish poet named Douglas and his translation of Virgil, and how the medieval translation resembles the true feeling of the Aeneid much more than many later translations because there is a great affinity between the medieval mindset and that of the ancients. He says that later "humanist" classicists distorted a lot of their translations because they imagined the tones to be so lofty that they missed making them also lively. He says that reading Douglas' version of the Aeneid is like looking at a well-known loved painting that has been cleaned, and learning that the smokey browns that you had been taught to love and admire as muted tones were actually dirt.

Oh, you just gotta love C. S. Lewis. Even when I don't have any familiarity with the books he is describing, there is still lots to learn, and he comes up with wonderful metaphors to explain his points.

[Jake McAtee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really great. The first chapter alone was really helpful for framing the conversation for a modern like myself. I was already familiar with most of the comments concerning the reformation and pauline doctrines. What I would give for this to have included* Drama.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stupendous.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Introduction, "New Learning and New Ignorance", is worth the price of the book. The remainder is for serious students of literature, or stubborn students of Lewis like myself.

[Hamster · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a textbook by C. S. Lewis. To the extent that it's a textbook, I can't say I think of it as great literature on its own merit. To the extent that it is a book by C. S. Lewis, it is one of the better textbooks you could find yourself reading. But on the whole I'd caution Lewis completionists from needing to be completionist about this book. It's certainly not for everyone. Even as an English grad I wouldn't have had enough context for this if I hadn't read Lewis's other works on Medieval and Renaissance literature first.

Having done so, I can safely say Lewis follows his typical strategy here: he attempts to identify every author's strengths and weaknesses, praising and critiquing every author regardless of their popularity, prestige, or his own feelings about them. It feels supremely fair, which I appreciate. However, it also has the strange effect that in the moment almost every author sounds interesting, but at the end of the book you start to feel like hardly anything good was written in the 16th century.

The introduction is brilliant, some of the best scholarship Lewis has ever done. But once the body of the book begins and Lewis gets into the rhythm that won't let up for 500 pages, it becomes just a pretty good textbook.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am sure this deserves 5 stars. I tried listening to it. But it's just too far above me. I don't know 16th C lit nearly well enough. Nonetheless, his comments in the into on science and magic are invaluable.

[Aaron Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

INTRODUCTION: NEW LEARNING AND NEW IGNORANCE
BOOK I. LATE MEDIEVAL
I. THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES IN SCOTLAND
II. THE CLOSE OF THE MIDDLE AGES IN ENGLAND
BOOK II. 'DRAB'
I. RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY AND TRANSLATION
II. DRAB AGE VERSE
III. DRAB AND TRANSITIONAL PROSE
BOOK III. 'GOLDEN'
I. SIDNEY AND SPENSER
II. PROSE IN THE 'GOLDEN' PERIOD
III. VERSE IN THE 'GOLDEN' PERIOD
EPILOGUE: NEW TENDENCIES

When we look back on the sixteenth century our main impression must be one of narrow escapes and unexpected recoveries. It looked as if our culture was going to be greatly impoverished. Yet somehow the 'upstart' Tudor aristocracy produced a Sidney and became fit to patronize a Spenser, an Inigo Jones, an early Milton. Somehow such an apparent makeshift as the Elizabethan church became the church of Hooker, Donne, Andrewes, Taylor, and Herbert. … I do not suppose that the sixteenth century differs in these respects from any other arbitrarily selected stretch of years. It illustrates well enough the usual complex, unpatterned historical process; in which, while men often throw away irreplaceable wealth, they not infrequently escape what seemed inevitable dangers, not knowing that they have done either nor how they did it.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a good book.

I didn't enjoy it as much as some of Lewis' books, but I still did think it was a good read on writing and literal criticism.

3.1/5

[Zachary Waltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a survey of the literature of the sixteenth century divided into a few periods. It begins with an introduction which, like an overture, brings out the themes that Lewis finds while reading and assessing the literature of the period. He then divides the period over the relative quality of each part: first the Medieval, then the Drab, then the Golden.

Introduction: New Learning and New Ignorance

"The rough outline of our literary history in the sixteenth century is not very difficult to grasp. At the beginning we find a literature still medieval m form and spirit. In Scotland it shows the highest level of technical brilliance: in England it has for many years been dull, feeble, and incompetent. As the century proceeds, new influences arise: changes in our knowledge of antiquity, new poetry from Italy and France, new theology, new movements in philosophy or science. As these increase, though not necessanly because of them, the Scotch literature is almost completely destroyed. In England the characteristic disease of late medieval poetry, its metrical disorder, is healed: but replaced, for the most part, by a lifeless and laboured regularity to which some ears might prefer the vagaries of Lydgate. There is hardly any sign of a new inspiration. Except for the songs of Wyatt, whose deepest roots are medieval, and the prose of the Prayer Book, which is mostly translation, authors seem to have forgotten the lessons which had been mastered in the Middle Ages and learned little in their stead. Their prose is clumsy, monotonous, garrulous, their verse either astonishingly tame and cold or, if it attempts to arise, the coarsest fustian. In both mediums we come to dread a certain ruthless emphasis; bludgeon-work. Nothmg is light, or tender, or fresh. All the authors write like elderly men. The mid-century is an earnest, heavy-handed, commonplace age: a drab age. Then, in the last quarter of the century, the unpredictable happens. With startling suddenness we ascend. Fantasy, conceit, paradox, colour, incantation return. Youth returns. The fine frenzies of ideal love and ideal war are readmitted. Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Hooker—even, in a way, Lyly—display what is almost a new culture: that culture which was to last through most of the seventeenth century and to enrich the very meanings of the words England and Aristocracy. Nothing in the earlier history of our period would have enabled the sharpest observer to foresee this transformation.

"Some have believed, or assumed, that it resulted from what seemed at the time to be a resurrection, rejuvenescence, or renascentia — the recovery of Greek and the substitution of Augustan for medieval Latin. It is, of course, true that the rich vernacular literature of the eighties used the fruits of that event, as it used the Middle Ages and everything else it could lay its hands on. It is also true that many movements of thought which affected our literature would have been impossible without the recovery of Greek. But if there is any closer connexion than that between the renascentia and the late sixteenth-century efflorescence of English literature, I must confess that it has escaped me. 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. And it may be as well to confess immediately that I have no alternative ‘explanation’ to offer. I do not claim to know why there were many men of genius at that time. The Elizabethans themselves would have attributed it to Constellation. I must be content with trying to sketch some of the intellectual and imaginative conditions under which they wrote." pp. 1-2

[Laurel Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twelve essays and speeches on literature and language by C. S. Lewis.

They were originally published as a part of a volume that is no longer in print, C. S. Lewis: Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces.

Included:
1. "Christianity and Literature"
2. "High and Low Brows"
3. "Is English Doomed?"
4. "On the Reading of Old Books"
5. "The Parthenon and the Optative"
6. "The Death of Words"
7. "On Science Fiction"
8. "Miserable Offenders"
9. "Different Tastes in Literature"
10. "Modern Translations of the Bible"
11. "On Juvenile Tastes"
12. "Sex in Literature"

The man makes sense.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am as out of my depth here to give helpful critique as I am
anywhere else in Lewis.
Despite writing about many things which I've never heard of,
most of which I will probably never read or even come across,
he manages to hold--if not my interest, then at least my attention
and respect. I am glad to have read this book, and will return to it
for help if I ever find myself writing criticism more serious than Goodreads
reviews.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly a classic; opinionated, readable, fun, learned.

[Jason Farley · Rating 5 out of 5]

At a hundred pages in I have to say that I need an education.

At 200, I've realized that I still needed an education about the fact that I need an education back when I was at 100 pages.

[sch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read once before in 2007: one of my all-time favorite books. Dipping in again as I prepare to teach British lit (Introduction, Sidney and Spenser).

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subject hardly matters when you have an excellent teacher, and C.S. Lewis delivers in this weighty, academic tome on sixteenth-century English literature.
A few excerpts for flavor:

- - -

What has been said above about the intellectual character of puritanism is quite consistent with the fact that an extreme puritan could reach a position which left hardly any room for secular learning or human reason. It is a paradox which meets us more than once in the history of thought; intellectual extremists are sometimes led to distrust the intellect.

- - -

Till now ‘The Renaissance’ can hardly be defined except as ‘an imaginary entity responsible for everything the speaker likes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.’

- - -

What is vital and healthy does not necessarily survive. Higher organisms are often conquered by lower ones. Arts as well as men are subject to accident and violent death. ... We ask too often why cultures perish and too seldom why they survive; as though their conservation were the normal and obvious fact and their death the abnormality for which special causes must be found. It is not so. An 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.

- - -

The trouble is that honest and wholesome poetry is utterly inadequate for the themes that Spenser is attempting. You cannot carry a reader beyond the flaming bounds of space and time simply by sincerity and conscientious workmanship. Poetry that deals with such towering conceptions as these must be either a continuous blaze of dazzling splendour or else fail completely. Great subjects do not make great poems, usually, indeed, the reverse.

- - -

These occasional absurdities, however, illustrate, not imbecility of mind, but the desperate shifts to which a strong mind may be put when hagridden by a premise which it will never allow itself to reconsider.

- - -

Prince and priest in the sixteenth century both still desire to ride the pale horse theocracy: and when two men ride a horse we know where one must sit.

- - -

As for the common idea that the reign of Christ was to be more merciful than that of Moses, Cartwright turns it by an astonishing argument. God, we see, has rather given up His old practice of sending temporal ‘judgements’ on offenders. We no longer see the earth opening to swallow up the congregation of Abiram. But that is exactly why the magistrate must now ‘kepe by so much a harder hande ouer the punishmente off synne’. As God does less, obviously He means us to do more.

- - -

[Peter Volkofsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the lovely—but not unexpected—surprises in this tome is that we find ourselves fully engrossed in serious reading and then laughing uproariously: caught in a trademark Lewis moment of dry humour.

The book is a real eye opener into the constellation of influences (and temptations) that are brought to bear on authors as fads, philosophies, burnings at the stake and other such habits come and go. This volume carries the winsome authority—and good natured heart—of a man who, having read and memorised so many works, inspires us into the art of how to put aside our 'inner conceited critic' when we read. Thus, I highly recommend this book as a refreshing and even healing draught in our age of trolls, cancels, fake news and word wars.

We discover (for example) Richard Hooker's revolution in the art of controversy. He 'provides a model for those of us in any age who have to answer "ready-made recipes for setting the world right in five weeks". A Protestant himself he wrote that there 'May come a day when we shall think it a blessed thing to hear that if our sins were as the sins of the pope and the cardinals, the ... mercy of God is greater still.'

We also find that in 'Elizabeth's time, nothing seems to have been more saleable than the censorious, the moral diatribe... we are overwhelmed with floods of morality from very young, very ignorant and not very moral young men.' But when we come to William Shakespeare we find 'the gentleness and candour of his mind has impressed all his readers... and, given the tone of 16th century literature, he is gloriously anomalous.'

The book is a sobering reminder that it can take an entire century for a nation to recover from the bad habits of 'famous and popular' authors who—often unwittingly—led it down into a swamp of badly written, poorly executed works of bad taste.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am painfully aware of how ludicrous it is for me to try to review this book. What can I say about a topic that is so far over my head that I can barely see it? C.S. Lewis created a deep dive into the depth and breadth of 16th century literature and I feel like a little child allowed to sit at the adult table, happily grinning around at the grown-up conversation that is passing around me while being completely inadequate to participate in it. I have been informed by academics actually capable of passing judgment on Lewis’work that he has great insight and provides needed context for a time of great transition in English literary history, but all I can do is nod along and meekly agree. I can still spot his signature wit and I laughed at several deliberate pronouncements that “at times, he left his standard mode of writing behind and became tolerable,” but I was unable to recognize his quotations or to comprehend the bits of Latin and Greek that he used to illustrate many of his points. My observations were limited to “Oh, he’s talking about More’s Utopia! I’ve heard of that. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it!” I was only on firm ground when he finally arrived at Shakespeare’s sonnets, though he passed them by relatively quickly. I think it is beneficial every once in a while to read something far out of your depth; it reminds you of how little actual knowledge you, or any single human, could ever have. Having recently read a biography of C.S. Lewis trying to contextualize these very essays while commenting on his life, it was really interesting watching Lewis himself contextualize the lives and essays of other men. It made me wonder how our own century will be defined by erudite historians willing to immerse themselves in all the best and worst of the 21st century 500 years from now. Regardless of the benefit that I might have gotten, I certainly added some interesting things to my reading list, first among them Edmund Spenser’s Fairie Queene!

[Ollie Burgess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly enlightening, these lectures are also a delight to read. I didn’t expect such a book to be hidden with comedic gems throughout. Lewis gives credit wherever it is due, but he has no qualms about saying a translator is “very, very bad,” or that his translation is like “Virgil in corsets.” None of his blunt critiques feel misguided or harsh - they all seem to be said with a wink and a chuckle, meant to make the students laugh at the joke while still respecting the poet. It’s a hard balance and a risk, but Lewis does it well. You can tell Lewis is in love with the literature he is talking about. It feels like an adventure, a textbook that decided to have a genuine personality, not randomly trying to make us laugh after sufficiently boring us to death first.

Besides its delight, it also helped me in two main ways: first, it helped me put the literature in its proper context. He is capable of seeing the religious and philosophical nuances of the time period. The Norton anthologies could use his help. Like, a lot. But I digress…

Second, hearing Lewis critique other writers has made me a better poet in the process. It taught me way more than a self-help poetry book ever could. Instead of saying, “use alliteration,” Lewis shows you what good alliteration looks like, how it is used in multiple contexts, and where poets failed miserably at the technique. Instead of giving you tips, he teaches you how to see and read poetry. My poetry improved after reading this book. That was not quite his intention in writing, but I don’t think he would be sad about that result at all.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and wonderful. Much of this book is about the birth of modern English language fine art writing in the early days of modern English as a written language (post Chaucer up to and including the time of Shakespeare). There wasn’t as strict a delineation between prose and poetry immediately. Lewis is effervescent with joy as he describes the birth and baby steps of what is recognizable as artistic composition. He shows his mind bending knowledge of the period and the subject matter with the same effusive pride a kid has with their Lego creations. His own use of language is a delight on its own regardless of the content. This Lewis book has no defense of the Faith or mythological fiction to it; this is a straight-up work of academics. He spent decades on this, and it shows. Frequently right at the top of my comprehension, I wasn’t deterred by my own pedestrian understanding of the area of study; his passion for the subject is infectious. There were a bunch of points in this book when I felt like an undergrad who had wandered into an advanced graduate seminar. That just means I need to read it again. I am starting 2024 with this book. This was the last Lewis book I had to read to complete my reading of his work. I plan on making this the “year of Lewis”, rereading his entire corpus, and ending on a reread of this book. I will be certainly looking for copies of Montagne, Samuel Daniel, Philip Sidney, and maybe even a little time for the Fairy Queen.

[Stewart Jarvis-Grove · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a real slog to get through. As with other Lewis non-fiction works I struggled with his style of writing and whole sections just didn't go in. The long introduction was like this but the second chapter on early Scottish authors flowed fine and I found it interesting.

However that led me into a false sense of security because the next chapters were back to his previous barely legible style for me.

I did learn quite a bit about the 16th century though I think. The amount of people executed was alarming and I was surprised I was able to read drab era language fine. I haven't tried to read anything by Shakespeare or his contemporaries since my school days and my only exposure to the language has been in films which I've hated. So it was not surprising that I struggled with the golden era writings. I definitely prefer the drab language.

I was aware of Spencer, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Chapman but the rest of the featured writers were knew to me or were people I was aware of but I didn't know they published anything.

So overall the book was OK. Neither good nor bad.

[Sean Higgins · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book full of judgements. It judged me.

OHEL—the Oxford History of English Literature—is Lewis' big boy book, his largest single volume, the fruit of his lifetime love and study of medieval lit. His Anglican light on the Puritans and the Reformers tries to be critical but ends up confirming things for Calvinists. His critic's light on 16th century prosers and poets introduced me to many new names and many new ways to say negative things with droll pleasure.

So I learned a lot and also smiled a bunch.

I started to read it in 2019, and it got the better of me in a few weeks. I started again last August, trying to give it ten minutes a day, and I am better because of it. I definitely don't think everyone needs to read this, but if you like Lewis and words, this book should be in your queue.