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Hansen Lectureship
Splendour in the Dark: C. S. Lewis's Dymer in His Life and Work
Several years before he converted to Christianity, C. S. Lewis published a narrative poem, Dymer, under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. Later, of course, Lewis became well known for his beloved imaginative stories, such as The Chronicles of Narnia and Till We Have Faces, as well as his ability to defend and articulate the faith in works such as Mere Christianity. But what about his literary work before his conversion? In this fourth volume in the Hansen Lectureship Series, Jerry Root contends that Lewis's early poem Dymer can not only shed light on the development of Lewis's literary skills but also offer a glimpse of what was to come in his intellectual and spiritual growth--a "splendour in the dark," to borrow one of Lewis's own lines from the poem. Under Root's careful analysis, Dymer becomes a way to understand both Lewis's change of mind as well as the way in which each of us is led on a journey of faith. This volume also includes the complete text of Dymer with annotations from David C. Downing, co-director of the Marion E. Wade Center. The Hansen Lectureship series offers accessible and insightful reflections by Wheaton College faculty members upon the transformative work of the Wade Center authors.
256 pages, Paperback
Published November 3, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 4, 2024
I always forget how Lewis's voice was so different in his early years--more experimental, more hesitant, more searching. Glad I've finally read Dymer, and this is a great edition to have, with annotations and complimentary essays from Root.
Lots of elements in Dymer immediately jumped out at me as allusions to Lewis's later works, see Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Till We Have Faces.
Of course, influences from Dante, Milton, and Spenser. I sensed a bit of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in here too, though I haven't read the full original poem yet.
Some favorite stanzas:
Canto I, stanza 1:
You stranger, long before your glance
can light
Upon these words, time will have washed away
The moment when I first took pen to write,
With all my road before me--yet to-day,
Here, if at all, we meet; the unfashioned clay
Ready to both our hands; both hushed to see
That which is nowhere yet come forth and be.
Canto I, stanza 12:
"Give me the truth! I ask not now for pity.
When gods call, can the following them be sin?
Was it false light that lured me from the City?
Where was the path--without it or within?
Must it be one blind throw to lose or win?
Has heaven no voice to help? Must things
of dust
Guess their own way in the dark?" She said,
"They must."
Lots of elements in Dymer immediately jumped out at me as allusions to Lewis's later works, see Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Till We Have Faces.
Of course, influences from Dante, Milton, and Spenser. I sensed a bit of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in here too, though I haven't read the full original poem yet.
Some favorite stanzas:
Canto I, stanza 1:
You stranger, long before your glance
can light
Upon these words, time will have washed away
The moment when I first took pen to write,
With all my road before me--yet to-day,
Here, if at all, we meet; the unfashioned clay
Ready to both our hands; both hushed to see
That which is nowhere yet come forth and be.
Canto I, stanza 12:
"Give me the truth! I ask not now for pity.
When gods call, can the following them be sin?
Was it false light that lured me from the City?
Where was the path--without it or within?
Must it be one blind throw to lose or win?
Has heaven no voice to help? Must things
of dust
Guess their own way in the dark?" She said,
"They must."
January 24, 2021
Summary: An annotated edition of C. S. Lewis’s Dymer and three presentations with responses given as part of the Hansen Lectureship series at Wheaton’s Marion E. Wade Center.
Many of us, including me, who are fans of the works of C. S. Lewis have never read Dymer, his book-length narrative poem. There may be several reasons for this. It is poetry, less popular with many than prose. It does not receive the circulation that many of Lewis’s works have. Also, it was written before Lewis’s return to faith. Also, as a work of his youth, most critics thought it wasn’t very good.
This work, a product of the Ken and Jean Hansen Lectureship may help make up for this on several fronts. The lectureship, taking place at Wheaton’s Marion E. Wade Center, which houses works and papers of Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers, and others in their literary circle, features scholarship on the Wade Center authors. Jerry Root is a Lewis scholar and author of several books. The book which includes the lectures by Root followed by responses, also opens with the poem, lightly annotated by David C. Downing, another Lewis scholar. Downing’s annotations are sparing, illuminating rather than distracting from the text. I recommend reading the poem first, followed by the lectures.
The poem was written in rhyme royal, a rhyme scheme used by Chaucer. The scheme is ABABBCC and the lines are in iambic pentameter. It consists of nine cantos, elaborating a narrative that had come to Lewis in his teens–and though written in his twenties, has that feel. A young man in the Perfect City is sitting in class, bored with lectures, gazes out the window, hears a lark, kills his lecturer and flees the city for nature. He wanders naked through a forest, finds a mansion-castle, wanders its halls, makes love with a woman he encounters, not knowing her name or remembering his face but knows that he loves her. After going out in the morning, he is barred from returning by an old crone who drives him away. In his wanderings he survives a narrow scrape with death, encounters a man suffering wounds from a revolt in the city that followed on Dymer’s actions led by a rebel named Bran. Perhaps as penance, he stays with the man until he dies, hears a lark, then a shot and comes upon a magician’s house and learned that the magician shot the lark. Drugged, Dymer dreams of his lover but recognizes these are dreams, awakens, cries for water, jumps through the window and escapes, being mortally wounded in the process. An angel comes, saying there is one more thing he must do–engage the beast laying waste to the land that is the offspring of his night in the castle. He does, he dies and the land springs to life.
Sounds like male adolescent imaginings to me! Yet there is also a journey into increasing insight, the shattering of illusions and a development from self-absorption to self-sacrifice. Sometimes the language seems stilted by the rhyme scheme, and at other times it soars.
All these things are acknowledged in the lectures and responses. Root argues that the big idea in this poem is that “reality is iconoclastic”–that it shatters idols, and that this poem was the place where Lewis first addressed this idea that recurs in Chronicles, Surprised by Joy, and other works all the way to Till We Have Faces. In his first lecture, Root retells the story (far better than my summary above) and traces the development of the idea. The second lecture focuses on the influences upon Lewis in writing the poem, mainly in mythology and the “Christina dream” of Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh. The third lecture then shows how the idea that reality is iconoclastic and many of the images of the early poem recur in deeper and richer form in Lewis’s later works. If Dymer is not a great work, it is certainly one helpful in understanding Lewis’s journey back to faith and the artistic imagination, informed and deepened by his faith, evident in his later works.
One example of how Root connects the imagery of Dymer to later works is noting the use of the mirror. In Dymer, the character sees a naked, wild-eyed man in the mansion-castle, only to realize it is himself he is seeing in a mirror. This occurs in The Great Divorce in the bus ride from hell to heaven, with Eustace Scrubb in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and with Queen Orual in Till We Have Faces. Root notes that these iconoclastic experiences not only reveal the really real, but expose the true self and fuel a quest for meaning, one that would eventually lead Lewis back into the arms of Christian faith.
Both Jeffrey Davis and Mark Lewis remind us of the flaws of the work, and Davis thinks that Lewis’s failure as a poet may have been a good thing, given the later impact of his prose work. Miho Nonaka, though slightly more appreciative of Root’s efforts also finds that Lewis may have been too close to Dymer, despite Lewis’s disavowals, and also critiques the intrusion of the narrator’s voice in his children’s fiction.
Even given these criticisms, really more of Lewis, Jerry Root (and the Hansen Lectureship) have done us a great favor in bringing Dymer to our attention. As I mentioned, I knew of the work but had relegated it to Lewis’s atheist years, seeing it, as it were, the work of a different author. Root helps show us the continuity rather than discontinuity in this work, the idea that reality is iconoclastic that will recur in later works, and the reflection on Lewis’s own development. Root (and Downing) have done a great service to every Inkling in acquainting us with this work!
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
Many of us, including me, who are fans of the works of C. S. Lewis have never read Dymer, his book-length narrative poem. There may be several reasons for this. It is poetry, less popular with many than prose. It does not receive the circulation that many of Lewis’s works have. Also, it was written before Lewis’s return to faith. Also, as a work of his youth, most critics thought it wasn’t very good.
This work, a product of the Ken and Jean Hansen Lectureship may help make up for this on several fronts. The lectureship, taking place at Wheaton’s Marion E. Wade Center, which houses works and papers of Lewis, Tolkien, Sayers, and others in their literary circle, features scholarship on the Wade Center authors. Jerry Root is a Lewis scholar and author of several books. The book which includes the lectures by Root followed by responses, also opens with the poem, lightly annotated by David C. Downing, another Lewis scholar. Downing’s annotations are sparing, illuminating rather than distracting from the text. I recommend reading the poem first, followed by the lectures.
The poem was written in rhyme royal, a rhyme scheme used by Chaucer. The scheme is ABABBCC and the lines are in iambic pentameter. It consists of nine cantos, elaborating a narrative that had come to Lewis in his teens–and though written in his twenties, has that feel. A young man in the Perfect City is sitting in class, bored with lectures, gazes out the window, hears a lark, kills his lecturer and flees the city for nature. He wanders naked through a forest, finds a mansion-castle, wanders its halls, makes love with a woman he encounters, not knowing her name or remembering his face but knows that he loves her. After going out in the morning, he is barred from returning by an old crone who drives him away. In his wanderings he survives a narrow scrape with death, encounters a man suffering wounds from a revolt in the city that followed on Dymer’s actions led by a rebel named Bran. Perhaps as penance, he stays with the man until he dies, hears a lark, then a shot and comes upon a magician’s house and learned that the magician shot the lark. Drugged, Dymer dreams of his lover but recognizes these are dreams, awakens, cries for water, jumps through the window and escapes, being mortally wounded in the process. An angel comes, saying there is one more thing he must do–engage the beast laying waste to the land that is the offspring of his night in the castle. He does, he dies and the land springs to life.
Sounds like male adolescent imaginings to me! Yet there is also a journey into increasing insight, the shattering of illusions and a development from self-absorption to self-sacrifice. Sometimes the language seems stilted by the rhyme scheme, and at other times it soars.
All these things are acknowledged in the lectures and responses. Root argues that the big idea in this poem is that “reality is iconoclastic”–that it shatters idols, and that this poem was the place where Lewis first addressed this idea that recurs in Chronicles, Surprised by Joy, and other works all the way to Till We Have Faces. In his first lecture, Root retells the story (far better than my summary above) and traces the development of the idea. The second lecture focuses on the influences upon Lewis in writing the poem, mainly in mythology and the “Christina dream” of Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh. The third lecture then shows how the idea that reality is iconoclastic and many of the images of the early poem recur in deeper and richer form in Lewis’s later works. If Dymer is not a great work, it is certainly one helpful in understanding Lewis’s journey back to faith and the artistic imagination, informed and deepened by his faith, evident in his later works.
One example of how Root connects the imagery of Dymer to later works is noting the use of the mirror. In Dymer, the character sees a naked, wild-eyed man in the mansion-castle, only to realize it is himself he is seeing in a mirror. This occurs in The Great Divorce in the bus ride from hell to heaven, with Eustace Scrubb in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and with Queen Orual in Till We Have Faces. Root notes that these iconoclastic experiences not only reveal the really real, but expose the true self and fuel a quest for meaning, one that would eventually lead Lewis back into the arms of Christian faith.
Both Jeffrey Davis and Mark Lewis remind us of the flaws of the work, and Davis thinks that Lewis’s failure as a poet may have been a good thing, given the later impact of his prose work. Miho Nonaka, though slightly more appreciative of Root’s efforts also finds that Lewis may have been too close to Dymer, despite Lewis’s disavowals, and also critiques the intrusion of the narrator’s voice in his children’s fiction.
Even given these criticisms, really more of Lewis, Jerry Root (and the Hansen Lectureship) have done us a great favor in bringing Dymer to our attention. As I mentioned, I knew of the work but had relegated it to Lewis’s atheist years, seeing it, as it were, the work of a different author. Root helps show us the continuity rather than discontinuity in this work, the idea that reality is iconoclastic that will recur in later works, and the reflection on Lewis’s own development. Root (and Downing) have done a great service to every Inkling in acquainting us with this work!
____________________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
June 30, 2021
see review at A Pilgrim in Narnia
December 10, 2020
Even though I am a lifelong C.S. Lewis fan, I was not aware of his published narrative poem, Dymer, until I started reading his collected journals from the 1920s. He wrote regularly then about how the poem was coming along, and even though my reading and interpretation skills for epic poetry are very limited, I thought that it would be interesting to read this pre-conversion work from my favorite author. When I learned about this upcoming study, I knew that this was the perfect opportunity. The first half of the book reprints the poem in a version annotated by David C. Downing, and the second half explores the poem’s themes and foreshadowing for Lewis’s future writings. Reading Dymer this way, with annotations and following analysis, I was able to get far more out of it than I could have otherwise.
Scholarly Insight and Readers’ Perspectives
Jerry Root delivered a series of lectures about Dymer at Wheaton College, and this book collects his scholarly insights into three chapters. At the end of each chapter, Root also includes a reader response essay from other writers. They each come from different backgrounds and write about Dymer from their unique perspectives, engaging with both the text and Root’s analysis. My favorite of the essays comes from Miho Nonaka, who writes some about her experience originally reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in a Japanese translation. I enjoyed all of the different perspectives, and think that they provide great balance to Root’s expert view of the work. Personally, I agree with the other respondents that Dymer has languished in obscurity for a reason, and that even though Jerry Root sees literary merit in it, it feels rushed, incomplete, and unsatisfying to the average reader.
However, just like the respondents, I thoroughly agree with Root’s interesting perspective into why Dymer is significant for understanding Lewis’s development as a writer. It intrigued me to see how frequently the poem references Bible verses, given that Lewis was an avowed atheist at the time that he wrote it, and the story of Dymer’s search for meaning and struggle against illusions reflects Lewis’s spiritual journey in many ways. Root draws parallels between the major themes of Dymer and some of Lewis’s later works, showing how he was later able to better understand and present his ideas through the lens of Christianity. Lewis’s epic poem reflects his youthful stage of life and struggle with disappointment against competing ideals that could not stand up against reality, and in this sense, some of his later works serve as an answer to Dymer, amplifying its themes with Lewis’s mature, converted worldview.
For Understanding Lewis
This book also includes Lewis’s preface to the 1950 edition of Dymer. He wrote that the idea of “disturbing its repose in the grave” came from the publishers, not him, and focused on clarifying potential areas of confusion and misinterpretation. Jerry Root analyzes this preface along with the work, and also draws on letters and other documentary evidence to provide insight on what Lewis thought and believed about this poem, both at the time of its writing and afterwards. Root never commit the error of attributing everything about a character to the author, and acknowledges how much it disturbed Lewis when people tried to read into an author’s mind and motives instead of engaging directly with a work, but he draws solid parallels between Dymer’s disillusionment and the frustration that the young Lewis faced.
I found this book fascinating, and even though the book will only be of interest to major fans of Lewis and literary scholars, I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in exploring this obscure work of Lewis’s, or who wants a more complete sense of his oeuvre, development as a writer, and primary thematic emphases. Part of the reason why I am giving this book five stars is because it accomplishes something that nothing else does, and provides a resource on a deeply neglected subject. I hope that this book will inspire future Lewis biographers and literary critics to pay more attention to this neglected work, since it has such strong implications for understanding Lewis’s development as a writer.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Scholarly Insight and Readers’ Perspectives
Jerry Root delivered a series of lectures about Dymer at Wheaton College, and this book collects his scholarly insights into three chapters. At the end of each chapter, Root also includes a reader response essay from other writers. They each come from different backgrounds and write about Dymer from their unique perspectives, engaging with both the text and Root’s analysis. My favorite of the essays comes from Miho Nonaka, who writes some about her experience originally reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in a Japanese translation. I enjoyed all of the different perspectives, and think that they provide great balance to Root’s expert view of the work. Personally, I agree with the other respondents that Dymer has languished in obscurity for a reason, and that even though Jerry Root sees literary merit in it, it feels rushed, incomplete, and unsatisfying to the average reader.
However, just like the respondents, I thoroughly agree with Root’s interesting perspective into why Dymer is significant for understanding Lewis’s development as a writer. It intrigued me to see how frequently the poem references Bible verses, given that Lewis was an avowed atheist at the time that he wrote it, and the story of Dymer’s search for meaning and struggle against illusions reflects Lewis’s spiritual journey in many ways. Root draws parallels between the major themes of Dymer and some of Lewis’s later works, showing how he was later able to better understand and present his ideas through the lens of Christianity. Lewis’s epic poem reflects his youthful stage of life and struggle with disappointment against competing ideals that could not stand up against reality, and in this sense, some of his later works serve as an answer to Dymer, amplifying its themes with Lewis’s mature, converted worldview.
For Understanding Lewis
This book also includes Lewis’s preface to the 1950 edition of Dymer. He wrote that the idea of “disturbing its repose in the grave” came from the publishers, not him, and focused on clarifying potential areas of confusion and misinterpretation. Jerry Root analyzes this preface along with the work, and also draws on letters and other documentary evidence to provide insight on what Lewis thought and believed about this poem, both at the time of its writing and afterwards. Root never commit the error of attributing everything about a character to the author, and acknowledges how much it disturbed Lewis when people tried to read into an author’s mind and motives instead of engaging directly with a work, but he draws solid parallels between Dymer’s disillusionment and the frustration that the young Lewis faced.
I found this book fascinating, and even though the book will only be of interest to major fans of Lewis and literary scholars, I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in exploring this obscure work of Lewis’s, or who wants a more complete sense of his oeuvre, development as a writer, and primary thematic emphases. Part of the reason why I am giving this book five stars is because it accomplishes something that nothing else does, and provides a resource on a deeply neglected subject. I hope that this book will inspire future Lewis biographers and literary critics to pay more attention to this neglected work, since it has such strong implications for understanding Lewis’s development as a writer.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
July 5, 2022
This annotated edition of C.S. Lewis's "Dymer," the long narrative poem that he published five years before his conversion to Christianity, is an invaluable resource to anyone wishing to take a deep dive into Lewis's lesser-known works.
Like the Wade Annotated Edition of The Pilgrim's Regress, the Wade edition of Dymer helps readers understand references that might otherwise be obscure to a 21st-century audience. It also connects the ideas in Dymer (1926) to ideas that show up in a much more developed form in Lewis's later and more widely-read works.
The first half of this volume is taken up mostly by the text of Dymer itself. The rest is taken up by a series of lectures on Dymer by Dr. Jerry Root, with each lecture followed by a response from one of his fellow faculty at Wheaton College.
I found this to be a very interesting approach. Those responding to Dr. Root's thoughts on Dymer do not always agree with his perspective (the first response in particular, by Dr. Jeffry Davis, more or less says "sorry, but I don't think Dymer is nearly as good a poem as Dr. Root makes it out to be"). It felt like listening in on a conversation between friends who love and respect each other but don't feel like they have to arrive at the exact same conclusions about everything.
That is what intellectual hospitality SHOULD be like (but too often is not).
I have other thoughts, including thoughts on the poem itself, that I will save for another time and place. Suffice it to say, this volume is a must-have for mega-fans of C.S. Lewis. Newcomers might be better off starting with one of his other works, but once you've had a taste of the mature Lewis, it's interesting to come back and look at how he started out.
I'll finish by offering my favorite passage from Dymer, which struck me as an obvious and major echo of some of the most provocative themes in Lewis's later writings:
"She said, for this land only did men love
The shadow-lands of earth. All our disease
Of longing, all the hopes we fabled of,
Fortunate islands or Hesperian seas
Or woods beyond the West, were but the breeze
That blew from off those shores: one far,
spent breath
That reached even to the world of change
and death."
~Lewis, Dymer, Canto VII, Stanza 22 (1926)
"These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what
we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking
the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a
flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have
never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your
fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them."
~Lewis, "The Weight of Glory" (1942 sermon)
"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"
~Lewis, The Last Battle, Ch. XV (1956)
Like the Wade Annotated Edition of The Pilgrim's Regress, the Wade edition of Dymer helps readers understand references that might otherwise be obscure to a 21st-century audience. It also connects the ideas in Dymer (1926) to ideas that show up in a much more developed form in Lewis's later and more widely-read works.
The first half of this volume is taken up mostly by the text of Dymer itself. The rest is taken up by a series of lectures on Dymer by Dr. Jerry Root, with each lecture followed by a response from one of his fellow faculty at Wheaton College.
I found this to be a very interesting approach. Those responding to Dr. Root's thoughts on Dymer do not always agree with his perspective (the first response in particular, by Dr. Jeffry Davis, more or less says "sorry, but I don't think Dymer is nearly as good a poem as Dr. Root makes it out to be"). It felt like listening in on a conversation between friends who love and respect each other but don't feel like they have to arrive at the exact same conclusions about everything.
That is what intellectual hospitality SHOULD be like (but too often is not).
I have other thoughts, including thoughts on the poem itself, that I will save for another time and place. Suffice it to say, this volume is a must-have for mega-fans of C.S. Lewis. Newcomers might be better off starting with one of his other works, but once you've had a taste of the mature Lewis, it's interesting to come back and look at how he started out.
I'll finish by offering my favorite passage from Dymer, which struck me as an obvious and major echo of some of the most provocative themes in Lewis's later writings:
"She said, for this land only did men love
The shadow-lands of earth. All our disease
Of longing, all the hopes we fabled of,
Fortunate islands or Hesperian seas
Or woods beyond the West, were but the breeze
That blew from off those shores: one far,
spent breath
That reached even to the world of change
and death."
~Lewis, Dymer, Canto VII, Stanza 22 (1926)
"These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what
we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking
the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a
flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have
never yet visited. Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your
fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them."
~Lewis, "The Weight of Glory" (1942 sermon)
"I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that is sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come further up, come further in!"
~Lewis, The Last Battle, Ch. XV (1956)
August 21, 2024
I feel like Dymer has transformed me in some way.
It pains men that it is so little appreciated and that there has been such a long dehydration of literature and poetry especially, in the years since Epic Poetry died. I do hope it will be revived by efforts by poets like Malcolm Guite.
The scholarship by Dr. Root was fantastic. The included poem inspired many more connections to later Lewis works and to earlier influences. Such as George McDonald’s, Phantastes, and Lilith, the main character of which is very similar to Dymer and highly influential to young CS Lewis. The road and pilgrimage of these characters and their mistakes or reflections in the fairy castle is a few moments I delighted to recognize in Dymer.
The weak part of this book was the responders.
Each qualified to respond, but seemed to miss Dr. Root’s love for this poem, one confused Root’s suggestion that this book is significant “to Lewis scholarship” to mean he was suggesting this be a registered Classic, such as Beowulf or The Cocktail Party…
And rather than matching Dr. Root’s lead in scholarly discussion, each responder would have an autobiographical introduction to why they felt out of place answering the paper assigned to him or her.
This distracted from the subject of the book, and I felt dissatisfied that a responder had to give the last word.
Not that what the responders had to say wasn’t interesting, the Poet from Japan expressed meeting Narnia as a child in Japan, and I really liked what she had to say, only it seemed jarring when I had been submerged in what hermeneutical knowledge Dr. Root had just provided. She complained about Lewis acting condescending in mentioning “the grown ups” but I felt like these responses were just that sort of thing.
It pains men that it is so little appreciated and that there has been such a long dehydration of literature and poetry especially, in the years since Epic Poetry died. I do hope it will be revived by efforts by poets like Malcolm Guite.
The scholarship by Dr. Root was fantastic. The included poem inspired many more connections to later Lewis works and to earlier influences. Such as George McDonald’s, Phantastes, and Lilith, the main character of which is very similar to Dymer and highly influential to young CS Lewis. The road and pilgrimage of these characters and their mistakes or reflections in the fairy castle is a few moments I delighted to recognize in Dymer.
The weak part of this book was the responders.
Each qualified to respond, but seemed to miss Dr. Root’s love for this poem, one confused Root’s suggestion that this book is significant “to Lewis scholarship” to mean he was suggesting this be a registered Classic, such as Beowulf or The Cocktail Party…
And rather than matching Dr. Root’s lead in scholarly discussion, each responder would have an autobiographical introduction to why they felt out of place answering the paper assigned to him or her.
This distracted from the subject of the book, and I felt dissatisfied that a responder had to give the last word.
Not that what the responders had to say wasn’t interesting, the Poet from Japan expressed meeting Narnia as a child in Japan, and I really liked what she had to say, only it seemed jarring when I had been submerged in what hermeneutical knowledge Dr. Root had just provided. She complained about Lewis acting condescending in mentioning “the grown ups” but I felt like these responses were just that sort of thing.
January 9, 2026
This is seriously worth every cent and more. First of all, you get Dymer in total as a Wade Center annotated edition. You get Lewis’ multiple prefaces, all changes between the first and last edition, AND Jerry Roots three lectures on Dymer, AND three responses by other scholars. This really helped me understand Lewis and his big ideas more.
Main takeaway: “Reality is iconoclastic”
Main takeaway: “Reality is iconoclastic”
May 7, 2021
Since I've read 5+ Lewis biographies and many books on the Inklings, I was very familiar all manner of things written about his post-atheism writings, not so much about his poetry. Found this to be a very interesting look at not just the poem, but the debate about how scholars should view it.
June 6, 2023
I was not familiar with Dymer, and I am glad to have discovered it in this book. The following essays we’re interesting, but not necessarily eye opening. A decent read but no the best of the Hansen series.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews