For much of his life, C. S. Lewis was an English tutor at Oxford University. In 1954, he became a professor of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge University. Lewis wrote several works on Medieval literature during his time at both Oxford and Cambridge. Among these literary works were several essays that were published into one volume after his death. These essays formed the pages to Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature.
There is much to learn about the Middle Ages from Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. In this work, Lewis wrote about Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante Alighieri, Thomas Malory, and other important writers from the Middle Ages. Lewis's ability to connect these writers from the classical world (such as Aristotle, Virgil, etc), is in my view, one of his greatest strengths in this work. After all, as Lewis described in The Discarded Image, reading Virgil and Ovid is essential to understanding Medieval literature.
Lewis knew that was much more to the Middle Ages than stories of chivalry, damsels in distress, and evil dragons. Certainly, Lewis understood the Middle Ages to be a very artistic time in history. Indeed, I found it interesting that Lewis alluded to the Middle Ages being more than knighthood and courtly love. Without question, he understood the literature of the time to be rooted in both philosophy and allegory.
''But we must remember, firstly, how ignorant these early medievalists were of the true Middle Ages, and secondly how ill provided the Middle Ages are with the sort of poetry they wanted to read. They wanted chivalry, not scholastic philosophy; enchanters, not allegory. They wanted, quite simply, knights in armour, castles, and love stories (Lewis, p. 114, 1966). ''
Later in the work, Lewis comes to discuss the great writers of the Renaissance. Among them, he wrote especially of Edmund Spenser. Interestingly enough, Lewis understood Spener to be both puritanical and humanist. However, Lewis understood the meaning of these words to mean something different in England than they would come to be understood in America:
''We can hardly help calling them 'Puritanism' and 'humanism,' but neither word mean the same as it does in America. By purity the Elizabethan Puritan meant not chastity but 'pure' theology, and, still more, 'pure' church discipline. That is, he wanted an all-powerful Presbyterian Church, a church stronger than the state, set up in England, on the model of Calvin's church in Geneva. Knox in Scotland loudly demanded, and at least one English puritan hinted, that this should be done by armed revolution. Calvin, the great successful doctrinaire who had actually set up the 'new order', was the man who had dazzled them all. We must picture these Puritans as the very opposite of those who bear that name today: as young, fierce, progressive intellectuals, very fashionable and up-to-date. They were not teetotallers; bishops, not beer, were their special aversion. And humanist in this sense means simply 'classicists'-men very interested in Greek, but more interested in Latin, and far more interested in the 'correct' or 'classical' style of Latin than in what the Latin authors said. They wanted English drama to observe the (supposedly) Aristotelian 'unities', and some of them wanted English poets to abandon rhyme-a nasty, 'barbarous' or 'Gothic' affair-and use classical metres in English. There was no necessary enmity between Puritans and humanists. They were often the same people, and nearly always the same sort of people: the young men 'in the movement', the impatient progressives demanding a 'clean sweep.' And they were united by a common (and usually ignorant) hatred for everything medieval: for scholastic philosophy, medieval Latin, romance, fairies, and chivalry (Lewis, p. 122, 1966).''
In short, Lewis understood that the Puritans were hardly ignorant. In fact, they had much in common with the Renaissance humanist. The two groups both moved away from theological movements in the Middle Ages that both mutually felt had gone wayward. At the same time, Puritanism had less to do with holy living and more to do with the aggressive support of Calvinism. Humanism, likewise, was not about the rejection of Orthodox but about the humanists wishing to return to the poetic styles of their Greco-Roman ancestors.
Lewis contributed several entire chapters of this work to the study of Edmund Spenser and his writings. According to Lewis, Spenser was not familiar with Middle English or much of Medieval literature (Lewis, p. 130, 1966). At the same time, he talks about Spenser's writings having a medieval character to them. Additionally, I find Lewis to have been partial to Medieval literature over Renaissance literature: ''The Elizabethans, even at their best, seem to lack that effortless good taste-one might say, that good breeding-which we nearly always find in the work of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance did not make men, in all senses, more civilized ( p. 129, ).'' Concerning this, much comes to my mind. As much as Lewis knew about English literature of the sixteenth century, I suspect that he was a true medievalist at heart. Throughout his writings, he deployed knighthood, allegory, and theology much as the literature of the Middle had been commonly known to do. no doubt, The Fairi Queen by Edmund Spenser had a tremendous influence upon Lewis (and likely upon his friends). In fact, he talked about how essentially boy was familiar with this work before 1914 ( p. 132).
I do wonder how much influence the Fairie Queen had on C. S. Lewis. I find it interesting that he referred to this work as a fairy-tale (Lewis, p. 133, 1966). Considering its Arthurian nature (which Lewis seems to have admired), I wonder to what extent The Chronicles of Narnia were inspired by this work. Likewise, I wonder if the strong use of its allegory served as literary food for Lewis to model his Narnia books after.
There is much that medievalists can learn from Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. I encourage all to read The Discarded Image before reading this work. Likewise, I believe those whose interests are more theological than literary will also benefit from these pages.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature is a worthy companion to The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature by C. S. Lewis. While between the two, I prefer The Discarded Image, I nevertheless, find both to be essential reads for any medievalist. To any aspiring scholar whose studies specialize in the Middle Ages, these works from Professor Lewis are among the best written on the literature from Medieval times.
One of the great uses of literary history is to keep reminding us that while man is constantly acquiring new powers he is also constantly losing old ones. It behoves us therefore to be humble and do our best (Lewis, pp.134-135 1966).
Finally, while The Discarded Image is a great introduction to Medieval literature, in this latter work, the modern reader gets further acquainted with the literature of Medieval Times, such as the world of Chaucer and Malory.
Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar. -Galatians 4: 24
