C. S. Lewis at One Hundred

Some years ago a church historian observed that the study of the English Puritans had become a minor industry. The same could be said about the study of C. S. Lewis since the centenary of his birth in 1998. In the almost fifty years since the death of Lewis in 1963, a group of scholars has arisen who have done much to advance Lewis studies. The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis, however, represents a new approach in the evaluation of Lewis.

With one or two exceptions the contributors to this volume are not known as Lewis scholars, though Lewis is well known to them. The outstanding group of scholars who have written chapters for this book have made names for themselves in theology, medieval studies, ethics, philosophy, gender studies, poetry, and modern literature, from which vantage points they have assessed Lewis in the breadth of his work. While academic theologians have tended to ignore Lewis, Robert MacSwain in his introduction warns that they do so at their peril. Though Lewis may not have been a trained theologian, he had an enormous influence on English-speaking Christianity in the second half of the twentieth century, and the substance of his influence deserves the critical evaluation that this book provides.

The editors have wisely begun the volume with an essay by John Fleming on Lewis as a literary critic. It is not hyperbolic to say that all of the popular writing of Lewis is an extension of his scholarly work. Not only his fiction but his theological work depends upon his literary scholarship, for Lewis had to master patristic and medieval theology in order to understand the medieval and Renaissance literature he loved. Fleming, though disagreeing with several of Lewis's literary positions, suggests that The Allegory of Love continues to offer "the very finest comprehensive and succinct presentation of the varieties of medieval allegory," and that his treatment of Chaucer is "revolutionary," placing Chaucer in a European context where he has remained since 1936. Fleming regards much of A Preface to Paradise Lost as "dazzling and original," as Lewis explains how epic poetry works while helping the reader understand Milton's perspective. Fleming argues that in The Discarded Image Lewis has provided "succinctly and brilliantly" an intellectual history of the medieval period that forms the context in which all literature was written. The pioneering contribution of Lewis in his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama comes with his insistence that European culture developed gradually from 1300 to 1700 rather than through a dramatic break between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Fleming concludes that Lewis's literary scholarship is his greatest work.

In his chapter on Lewis as an intellectual historian, Dennis Danielson deals with De Descriptione Temporem, A Preface to "Paradise Lost," the introduction to English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, and The Discarded Image. Danielson argues that in all but The Discarded Image Lewis writes as a partisan not aiming to convert his opponents so much as to win support from the undecided. Though Danielson points out places where Lewis could have strengthened his position as an intellectual historian, he recognizes that Lewis provides a model for learning in terms of interdisciplinary study: "In an age that increasingly values the kind of interdisciplinary work that he unostentatiously embodied, Lewis merits a more careful hearing than ever before—for both the imaginative and critical sides of his impressive endeavour."

Stephen Logan contrasts the 2,400-year tradition of literary criticism in the West to which Lewis belonged and contributed, with the new approach to literary theory that has come to dominate studies in English since the death of Lewis in 1963. Identifying Lewis as a romantic with strong affinities for Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge, Logan argues that as a theorist, Lewis brought a moral and metaphysical dimension to the reading of literature that recent theory has tended to ignore. Logan concludes that Lewis "is the writer who most incisively and insistently comments on...