C. S. Lewis As a Critic of Romanticism Teresa Bela

C. S. LEWIS AS A CRITIC OF ROMANTICISM TERESA BELA Jagiellonian University, Kraków C. S. Lewis (1898–1963), a famous Oxford tutor and lecturer, and later Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge, made his name in three main fields: as a literary historian and critic, as a Christian apologist and moralist, and as a writer of fiction, both for children and adult readers. As the information from the annual bibliography of the Modern Language Association indicates, the number of articles and books on C. S. Lewis had been steadily growing since the late sixties, and in 1998, the year of the cele- brations of the centenary of his birth, it reached its apogee. Diana Pavlac Glyer’s selected bibliography lists over 100 modern scholarly book publica- tions on the author of Narnia stories (Glyer 1998:283-90). Richard Attenborough’s film Shadowlands (1993), which dealt with Lewis’s love for Joe Gresham and his suffering after her death, was an important sign of the ever-present interest in his life and work. The earlier instances of such consid- erable attention paid to the author of The Screwtape Letters and stories from Narnia are seen in the founding of several C.S.Lewis Societies in the United States and Canada, whose aim was to increase the knowledge and understand- ing of Lewis’s works and promote a further interest in his life and character. A renewed interest in J. R. R. Tolkien, due to the enthusiastic reception of the film The Lord of the Rings, has also helped to remind the reading public and the viewers of the strong bond of friendship that joined the author of Silmarillion and C. S. Lewis. The interest in C. S. Lewis the critic is much less pronounced than in Lewis the man or Lewis the author of children’s fiction or of Christian apolo- getics. Among the books dealing with his contribution to the literary history and criticism, most attention has been paid to his role as a medievalist and a critic of Renaissance Literature (his most important and lasting contribution to the research in the field of Older English Literature came with The Allegory of Love, A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’, The Discarded Image, The Oxford History of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama, and many essays). Lewis’s attitude to Romanticism is one of the aspects of Lewis’s criticism that has been dealt with only marginally, in critics’ passing remarks. Therefore, it is the aim of the present paper to provide a more comprehensive description of Lewis’s views on Romantic literature and Romanticism as a B.A.S. vol. XI, 2005 178 movement in European culture and to offer a reflection on the importance of these views for Lewis’s concept of modernity. As can easily be observed, the title: “C. S. Lewis as a Critic of Romanticism” is significantly ambiguous: it may denote either Lewis’s contribution to the criticism of Romantic literature or his critical attitude towards Romanticism. In its first meaning, the title may sound like a provocation to those familiar with Lewis’s critical work. It is generally known among Lewis scholars that he wrote only three articles dealing with Romantic literature: “Shelley, Dryden, and Mr Eliot” (1939), “A Note on Jane Austen” (1954) and “Sir Walter Scott” (1956). In all the three essays the Romantic authors, even Percy Bysshe Shelley, are praised for the virtues that are not obviously ‘romantic’. Thus Jane Austen is described as a novelist who in her subject matter and style should be seen not as a romantic author but as “the daughter of Dr Johnson” (Lewis 1969:186). Shelley is found to be a more classical poet than Dryden and Scott, and although praised in the essay as someone who first taught his readers the sense of a historical period, he is claimed by Lewis to have more in common with the values of the previous age (i.e. the Enlightenment) than with the Romantics. There is a similar dimension to Lewis’s appreciation of Scott’s novels: they are not perceived as romantic texts, but as the works which allow the reader to “breathe the air of sense” (Lewis 1969: 218). The conclusion that can be drawn from such a presenta- tion of these authors confirms the suspicion, already suggested by Lewis’s lim- ited interest in Romantic literature, that he was rather distrustful of the mer- its of the Romantic Movement. However, unlike in the case of his openly pronounced partiality for medieval literature and culture, Lewis’s attitude towards Romanticism is not clearly described, but has to be deduced from a number of statements scat- tered throughout his work as literary historian, as writer of intellectual history and as moralist and Christian apologist. Since the scope of the present paper does not allow any extensive survey of the subject, only two texts are proposed here as material for a scrutiny: Lewis’s Preface to the revised edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism (1943), and his lecture “De Descriptione Temporum”, published separately by Cambridge University Press in 1955 and then included in his Selected Literary Essays (1969). Both texts are, in my opinion, the most repre- sentative statements of C. S. Lewis’s position with reference to Romanticism. As is generally known, the term ‘romantic’ has come to denote so many qualities that it is difficult to come up with one definition of the concept. This has led Arthur Lovejoy to a contention that it is proper to speak of ‘romanticism’ only in the plural, which has been demonstrated in his essay “On 179 VOLATILE ROMANTICS Discrimination of Romanticisms” (1923). It is not known whether Lewis shared Lovejoy’s skepticism, but he certainly thought the term ambiguous enough to require a new extended explanation. In his Preface to The Pilgrim’s Regress (1943) he defines the term ‘romantic’ in his own way introducing a sevenfold division of the meaning of this word in the literary context. He thinks that ‘romantic’ as a term covers the following qualities and/or literary and cultural phenomena: 1. Stories about dangerous adventure, like those of Alexander Dumas. 2. The marvellous (but not a part of believed religion); hence such characters as magicians, ghosts, fairies, and such authors as Malory, Boiardo, Ariosto, Spenser, Tasso, Shelley, Coleridge and Morris deserve to be called ‘romantic’. 3. Literary works with ‘Titanic’ characters, extreme emotions and idealis- tic codes of honour; another term that Lewis thinks can be used here is ‘Romanesque’. In this meaning such figures as Sidney, Corneille, Michelangelo, and such works as Dryden’s dramas (i.e. his heroic plays) are romantic, too. 4. Indulgence in the abnormal, in the macabre and in torture (this kind of theme is understood as ‘romantic’ by such scholars as Mario Praz and M. D. de Rougemont); therefore, such authors as Poe or Baudelaire are also classed as romantic. 5. Qualities such as egotism and subjectivism are characteristically romantic when they appear as features of the main characters in literary works: therefore Byron and D. H. Lawrence are both ‘romantic’ authors. 6. Every revolt against existing civilization or conventions is considered romantic, therefore such artists as Epstein, Lawrence and Wagner are romantic from this point of view as well. 7. Sensitivity to natural objects, when it is solemn and enthusiastic; in this respect Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, de Vigny, de Musset, Goethe are all perceived by Lewis as romantic. (cf. Lweis 1943:viii) Lewis makes it clear in many places in his work that not all the charac- teristics from such a wide range of ‘romantic’ qualities appealed to him to the same degree. What is more, he was openly hostile to some of them since they contradicted his opinions about the value of art and life in general. Thus, it has been known from his autobiography Surprised by Joy (1955) and from other sources (e.g. his essay ‘On Stories’) that he always had a spe- cial liking for the qualities covered by the first and second definitions; he con- B.A.S. vol. XI, 2005 180 firms this in the Preface to The Pilgrim’s Regress and remarks that he came to love the ‘Romanesque’ when he became an adult. In the Preface he mentions that he always detested the fourth and the fifth kind of ‘romantic’ qualities in literature. Indulgence in the abnormal and in the macabre, often found in the literature of the Romantic period, was for him a symptom of ‘bad taste’. It also suggested to him a dangerous morbidity, opposed in every way to ‘the mental health’ which he thought good ‘romantic’ poetry, such as that of Edmund Spenser, was able to offer to the reader. Neither did he appreciate the cult of egotism and subjectivism which he found in the literature of the Romantic period often regarded as typical (e.g. Byron’s poetry). And he had no sympa- thy with the idea of romanticism as a revolt against existing civilizations and conventions. He considered it as destructive and disintegrating and, in the long run, dangerous to the values of European culture. He accepted, with reservations, the romantic sensitivity to natural objects if this did not turn to a clear deification of nature, i.e. pantheism. The conclusion that can be drawn from Lewis’s own classification and definition presents him as a critic and writer who did not share most of the beliefs and convictions of the period called Romanticism.

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