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9781107639270

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'C. S. Lewis is one of the very best critics writing in English in the twentieth century, vivid, provoking, and eloquent, as well as deeply learned in the literature of Europe from the ancient classics to his own time, with a special mastery of medieval and Renaissance poetry. He is now popularly better known for his fiction and his religious writings than his literary criticism. But it is his gifts as a critic which will endure as his truly pre-eminent legacy. Like Samuel Johnson, on whose personality and writings Lewis modelled himself, he is a commentator whose insights and opinions are enriching even when one disagrees with them, raising central questions and offering challenging perspectives. His Allegory of Love is a classic of intellectual history. The Discarded Image, which began as a series of electrifying lectures to undergraduates, brings to life in a short vivid space the intellectual and imaginative culture of the Middle Ages and Early Modern Europe, a masterpiece of 'world picture' encapsulation totally free of the bland truisms which are often typical of the genre. Among the many brilliant pieces outside his acknowledged fields of expertise, I would identify a memorable essay on the unpromising subject of Addison, which illuminates a momentous shift in our cultural history, and throws light on the enduring and volatile relationship between high culture and the popular media. There is no essay by Lewis on any writer that does not provoke attention and inspire awe at his energy and clarity of mind. Claude Rawson, Yale University

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Walter Hooper, Literary Adviser to the Estate of C. S. Lewis, is editor of the three-volume work The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis (2000, 2004 and 2006) and author of C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (1996) and (with Roger Lancelyn Green) C. S. Lewis: A Biography (1974; revised edition, 2002).

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