The Last of the Dinosaurs: a medievalist at Oxford and Cambridge, and what Narnia owes to its library

• University College (1917-1924): three "first class" honors.
• Magdalen College, Oxford (1925-1954): fellow and tutor.
• Magdalene College, Cambridge (1954-1963): professor of medieval and Renaissance literature.
• Planets, living stars, chivalry, dryads: the professor's scholarship populates Narnia.

« I am a dinosaur »

In 1954, the University of Cambridge created a chair of medieval and Renaissance English literature for Lewis at Magdalene College (with an « e »). His inaugural lecture, De Descriptione Temporum, on November 29, 1954, was packed: he described himself as a « dinosaur », one of the last witnesses of an ancient world that his audience would no longer know. That evening, he was fifty-six years old and had nearly thirty years of teaching behind him. Here's how he got there.

Brilliant student

Returning from the war in 1919, Lewis resumed his studies at University College, Oxford. In four years, he earned three « first class » honors, the highest distinction: in classical languages (1920), in philosophy and ancient history (1922), and in English literature (1923), which he completed in a single year. He didn't immediately find a position: he gave private tutorials, substituted for a philosophy professor, and lived frugally with Mrs. Moore. His journal from these years bears witness to this.

Magdalen's tutor

In 1925, he was elected fellow of Magdalen College, on the banks of the Cherwell, with its deer park and Addison's Walk. He taught English language and literature there for nearly thirty years. The heart of Oxford's system is the tutorial: a student, sometimes two, comes each week to read an essay aloud in front of his tutor, who discusses it point by point. Lewis was formidable in this role. He demanded precision, dismantled hollow phrases, but took each student seriously. Some left crushed, others transformed.

Among his students: the future poet John Betjeman, with whom he didn't get along at all; the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan; Bede Griffiths, future Benedictine monk who went to live in India; George Sayer, future biographer of Lewis; or Derek Brewer, a great specialist of Chaucer.

The lecturer who filled the halls

His lectures, especially his « Prolégomènes » on medieval and Renaissance literature, attracted large crowds: one had to arrive early to get a seat. Lewis spoke without reading, with a powerful voice, a dry wit, and an amazing memory; he quoted long passages from memory. These lectures would later become The Discarded Image (1964).

Did you know

The Allegory of Love (1936) revealed him as a leading medievalist. This was followed by the Preface to Paradise Lost (1942) and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), a monumental work of nearly 700 pages. Lewis fought against trends: he defended allegory, Milton, old books, and was wary of « chronological snobbery », the idea that a thought is outdated simply because it is old.

Why no chair at Oxford?

Despite his work, Oxford never offered him a professorial chair. Several times, he was passed over in favor of colleagues. Many saw this as the effect of his fame as a Christian apologist, which annoyed some: a serious academic did not write popular books about God, let alone children's stories. Lewis suffered in silence. It was Cambridge that finally offered him a chair; Tolkien, a member of the committee, helped convince him to accept. Lewis found the atmosphere there more welcoming, kept his house at the Kilns, and made the weekly train trip. He resigned in 1963, a few months before his death.

In brief

It was while he was writing his great book on the sixteenth century that Lewis wrote the Chronicles. Open them with his scholarly books nearby, and one recognizes their shelves:

• The Medieval Cosmos (The Discarded Image): living stars like Ramandu, planets Tarva and Alambil that appear in Prince Caspian, the dance of the stars in The Last Battle.
• Chivalry and Courtly Love (The Allegory of Love): the code of honor of Reepicheep and Peter, the taste for tournaments and duels.
• Plato, whom the professor Kirke cites in The Last Battle: « Everything is in Plato! »
• Intermediate beings of the Middle Ages, nymphs, dryads, and Mr. Tumnus, who populate Narnia's forests.
• The view of Satan from his Preface to Paradise Lost, which is reflected in the empty grandeur of the White Witch.

And the reverse is true: his scholarly books are written with the sense of narrative of a novelist.

Was the dinosaur right?

Lewis believed that his generation was the last to inhabit the old world of books. Seventy years later, his published lectures are still read by students discovering the Middle Ages, and Narnia passes on to millions of children, without their knowing, a bit of that vanished world.

See also

• The Allegory of Love (title not translated into English)
• Preface to Paradise Lost (title not translated into English)
• English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (title not translated into French)
• The Discarded Image (title not translated into French)
• An Experiment in Criticism
• Other Essay Collections
• All My Road Before Me: A Journal of sorts
• On Reading Well: The Confessions of C.S. Lewis
• J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis
• Digory Kirke