Today is the day that The Inklings and King Arthur is available now on Amazon and other bookseller lists. In 2013, a previously-unpublished work by J.R.R. Tolkien appeared: The Fall of Arthur, his only explicitly Arthurian writing. The publication of this poem highlighted the many connections between “The Matter of Britain” and not only Tolkien’s legendarium but the work of all the Inklings. While most of Inklings Arthuriana was incomplete, obscure, or unpublished, we have to regard this legend as one of the critical connective tissues of the Oxford Inklings.
Perceiving the link, literary scholar Sørina Higgins invited an examination of the theological, literary, historical, and linguistic implications of the Arthurian writings of all the major Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield. The result was The Inklings and King Arthur: J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, & Owen Barfield on the Matter of Britain. This edited essay collection examines the Arthurian works of Tolkien, Lewis, Williams, Barfield, their predecessors, and their contemporaries. The result is a collection of 20 essays from senior and emerging scholars that offers exciting, rigorous analytical perspectives on a wide range of the Inklings’ Arthurian and related works.
This is an essential academic book, and I am proud of my own contribution, where I think about how Lewis brings various fictional worlds together in That Hideous Strength (Lewis’ only overt Arthurian novel, and one of the few Inklings pieces of Arthurian fiction to be published when it was written).
What can you do to celebrate this Inklings and Arthur showpiece?
You can join us for a special Inklings and Arthur blog series that will run this winter on A Pilgrim in Narnia. Each Wednesday there will be a special feature on one or more of the Inklings and the many worlds of the Matter of Britain. Posts will include writers from the volume, as well as other leading bloggers and scholars in the field. Look for posts on:
- C.S. Lewis and the Legends of Arthur, Charles Williams’ Commonplace Book, Christian and Pagan Depictions of the Grail, the personalization of Logres and Britain, Chesterton on the Imagination, and thoughts about history and Arthuriad.
- I will post a little bit about my own chapter.
- Guest Editor David Llewellyn Dodds will be overseeing the entire affair, with his own academic strength in both the Inklings and Arthurian worlds.
- Also be sure to watch for a post by the cover artist, Emily Austin.
The official launch party will be on January 13th at TexMoot (at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas). I’m afraid I won’t get to the noontime party or TexMoot, but you can register for TexMoot here.- In a much less official capacity, you can join some rogue Inklings for a bit of a Twitter banter session tonight (January 1st at 8:00pm). Watch for the hashtag ##InklingsAndArthur, and be sure to follow them on twitter (I will be the Lewis tweeter):
- C. S. Lewis: @PilgrimInNarnia
- J. R. R. Tolkien: @JohnRonaldReuel
- Charles Williams: @OddestInkling
- Owen Barfield: @BarfieldDiction
- Hugo Dyson: @hugo_dyson
You can review the book on your blog, or a popular magazine, or for an academic journal. If you are a Reviews Editor, send a note to inklingsandarthur@gmail.com and we’ll get you to the book’s publisher.- Do recommend the book to your local library.
- Please also share the news on your own social media accounts, linking back to this post or any that will make sure the right readers find their way to the book.
- And, of course, you can pick the book up for yourself!
I look forward to the arrival of my copy of Dr. Higgins’s book. In the meantime, here’s a question for discussion:
When we talk about the Matter of Britain (or, as some might prefer, the Matter of Logres), what are the books with which we should try to become familiar?
What is needed beyond an edition of Malory’s Morte plus Sir Gawain and the Green Knight? May it be taken that pretty much everything that really counts –for the Inklings– will be found in these two books?
Unless one is interested in tracing the “development” and elaboration of the Arthurian “mythos,” does one need books such as the following? I’m going to list ones that I happen to have on hand:
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Histories of the Kings of Britain (Everyman’s Library, ed. Evans)
Quest of the Holy Grail (commonly, apparently falsely, attributed to Walter Map; translated from the French of about 1225 by Matarasso for Penguin Classics)
Death of King Arthur (13th-century French romance, tr. Cable for Penguin Classics)
Tristan, by Gottfried von Strassburg (ca 1210, translated by Hatto for Penguin Classics)
Parzival (German, early 13th century?, translated by Hatto for Penguin Classics)
Arthurian tales in The Mabinogion (translated by Thomas Jones and Gwyn Jones, an Everyman’s Library paperback)
I acknowledge that my list doesn’t include Gildas, Wace, Nennius, Chretien de Troyes, &c.
Moreover, does the Inklings-oriented reader need a complete text of Malory’s Morte? Penguin Classics used to have a two-volume edition of Caxton’s version of Malory. Although I’ve read that, the book I’m more acquainted with is the Oxford World’s Classics paperback of Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript. That edition is “slightly abbreviated,” according to editor Helen Cooper. When I have taught a course including Malory, I assigned about 3/5 of this book, omitting nearly all of the Tristram de Lyonesse material. Is that Tristram material important for the Inklings?
It would be interesting to compare notes on this topic at the outset. Possibly after the discussions have run their course, some people will have changed their view. At present, my impression is that one may say with a fair degree of confidence that what really matters for the Inklings is Malory’s Morte minus Arthur’s war with Rome and the Tristram material, plus Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A really good degree of familiarity with this material, perhaps involving multiple readings, is much more important for an Inklings-oriented reader to acquire, than a wider reading of Arthurian texts. The reading I suggest would come to something like 450 pages. The reader setting out to explore this topic need not, then, feel daunted by the prospect of a bunch of books.
Dale Nelson
Good question(s)! I’d be tempted to think anything available in Everyman in their young years was (possibly) important – including Geoffrey, Wace and Layamon, Sebastian Evans’s High History of the Holy Grail translation of Perlesvaus, Lucy Allen Paton’s Morte Arthur: Two Early English Romances (1912), W.W. Comfort’s Chretien volume, the Guest Mabinogion, Marie’s Lays, and the two-volume Caxton’s Malory, and, beyond Everyman, maybe Jessie Weston’s Wolfgang’s Parzival – and Wagner (as well as Tennyson, Morris, Swinburne, and Hawker).
But just who indeed knew which, when, and how well, is another question worth pursuing! (For instance, what the evidence we have of all that Williams had heard and noted the existence of at a fairly early date may mean for what he actually read, is a tantalizing matter!)
I’d love to know in just what forms the Quest of the Holy Grail was available, when, as Williams’s retelling seems so compatible with it, in many ways.
And, Dorothy L. Sayers’s Tristan in Brittany, Being Fragments of the Romance of Tristan, Written in the Twelfth Century by Thomas the Anglo-Norman (1929) and Belloc’s The Romance of Tristan & Iseult (1913) both get me wondering how widely we should be casting our net.
PS also 18 Sept. 2019 to my comment on David’s “Sebastian Evans’s High History of the Holy Grail translation of Perlesvaus.”
I have just read the Translator’s Afterword by Sebastian Evans to his High History of the Holy Grail. He nowhere writes “Perlesvaus,” BUT he keeps writing as if he offers here a book from the 1200s — not the 1500s.
I am confused.
So I have a printout of the Evans book, certainly the book that the adolescent Lewis raved about (once!) in writing to Arthur Greeves. But what exactly this Evans book IS, is unclear to me.
I hope someone can help….David?
18 Sept. 2019
PPS Sebastian Evans says, in his Epilogue at the end of the second volume (of two) of The High History of the Holy Grail, that his book is a translation of Perceval le Gallois ou le Conte du Graal, which he dates to the first third of the 16th century.
Nowhere in his Epilogue does he say this work is the Perlesvaus, so I wonder how we know that it is it, or part of it.
Still….
The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, paperback ed., ed. Norris Lacy, from which I have quoted already, refers to “Sebastian Evans’s translation of the Perlesvaus (1898). It says that a more recent translation (1978, by Nigel Bryant), is titled The High Book of the Grail. So that sounds as if the Evans book at hand is the Perlesvaus (New Arth. Encyc. p. 405). The New Arth. Encyc. also reproduces one of Burne-Jones’s designs for The High History and (in brackets) states it is Perlesvaus.
So I stand corrected, and David stands vindicated. But I wish Evans’s Epilogue, & the NAE, had been clearer.
So we know that Lewis had read at least part of a translation of Perlesvaus & that that is what he was referring to in his rave to Arthur Greeves. Decades later, when he referred to Perlesvaus is a review of the Chambers book, he was referringto a book he had read, at least in part, at least in translation.
Dale Nelson 18 Sept 2019
The distinction Evans makes is between the date of the manuscript “which is by far the most complete known copy” which the catalogue he quotes assigns to the the “first third of the sixteenth century” and the date of the romance copied there: he says this manuscript was written “three centuries later than the original romance” (1898 vol. 2, p. 283). I quote the copy scanned in the Internet Archive, and note that at the moment, there are also scans there of the 1898 volume I, the 1902 vol. I, a 1903 edition of both volumes in one with continuous pagination and “The Translator’s Epilogue” moved to the beginning as “Introduction”, a 1907 volume II, and a 1913 reprint of the 1910 “Everyman’s Library” edition with and “Editor’s Note” by Ernest Rhys in appreciation of Evans who died in 1909, followed by a rather curious bibliography. I’ll hope to follow with a P.S.
Happily, I find that the Internet Archive also includes two scans of Evans’s stated source, the first volume (published in 1866) of Charles Potvin’s edition of “Le Roman en Prose | de la Fin du XII.e Siècle”. Unhappily, my French is abysmal. I note that there is an editorial discussion on pages [353]-358. It notes (p. 356) – if I read aright – that the author writes the name of the hero in diverse fashions: “Pellesvaux, Peslevaux, Percevaux, Percevax”. It does not mention the form ‘Perlesvaus’ or (so far as I can tell) discuss what this prose work is (customarily) entitled, or why. I blush to say, I cannot recall having pursued the history of the nomenclature, or anything I may have read about it.
I note as of possible interest that fadedpage.com now has a transcription of Arthurian Torso online, for convenience of reference to Williams’s incomplete Figure of Arthur as published there by Lewis. Williams’s discussion of Evans’s translation is in Chapter V, between the transcription’s right-hand margin reference numbers 74 and 79.
An interesting bundle of questions is, which of the Inklings would have known which of the medieval versions in which original languages in which editions?
P.P.S. Nigel Bryant’s translation as found at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk is entitled The High Book of the Grail: A translation of the thirteenth-century romance Perlesvaus on the cover-photo included, but alas has no handy ‘look inside’ feature to try to see if he discusses the conventional nomenclature, or, for that matter, Evans’s translation.
“Sebastian Evans’s High History of the Holy Grail translation of Perlesvaus” —
Tardily, I checked into this. The Sebastian Evans translation is part of Perceval le Gallois, dated 1530 by my Arthurian Encyclopedia (p. 162). Perlesvaus dates to 1200 (Arth. Encyc. pp. 358-359).
This leaves me wondering, by the way, in what degree and in what way Lewis may have known Perlesvaus. He quotes Sir E. Chambers as describing it as “melancholy” in his review of Chambers’ Sir Thomas Wyatt and Some Collected Studies (see CSL’s Image and Imagination, p. 283). But you can’t tell from that whether Lewis has read Perlesvaus himself. Does he mention Perlesvaus anywhere else?
But the work translated by Evans delighted the teenaged Lewis. He told Arthur Greeves (letter of 8 Nov. 1916) “It is absolute heaven: it is more mystic & eerie than the ‘Morte’ & has [a] more connected plot.” By the “Morte,” Lewis is referring to Malory.
Doesn’t that make you want to Rush Right Out and get hold of the Evans?
Dale Nelson, 18 Sept. 2019
I found further references to Sebastian Evans’s translation. In the second volume of the CSL Letters, in fact, he lists “the Morte Darthur [Malory], the Orlando Furioso [Ariosto], the Faerie Queene [Spenser], the Arcadia [Sidney], the High History of the Holy Grail [thus] & all Wm Morris, bust especially his prose romances,” as his “own favourite reading.” [Letter to Gerald Hayes, 21 March 1943]
So I have been overlooking this work as not just something Lewis had read, but as among his very most loved reading. That was worth discovering, though I’m sorry I have been blundering around Pilgrim today in learning better.
In the third volume of Letters, CSL writes to William Kinter (28 June 1955), praising Dorothy L. Sayers’ translation of Dante, etc. and suggesting Evans’s High History translation. Kinter was a teacher who had apparently asked Lewis for recommendations of texts.
Thank you, David, for so much bibliographic help. If the “Inklings and Arthur” series were still running, a column on this translation would have been worth someone’s while.
Dale Nelson 18 Sept 19
Indeed! What a fine collection of Lewis references you have discovered and accented. (At least, I did not remember any of them, though I must have read at least a couple of them.) One now wonders whether Williams ‘rediscovery’ (if that’s what it was) of Evans’s translation might have been interestingly fed, or even occasioned, by discussion with Lewis in Inklings context. It was a ‘big deal’ to Williams in that he introduced the name ‘Dindrane’ into his late Arthurian poetry thanks to Evans.
It is probably worth noting that one of the copies of Charles Potvin’s source text edition scanned in the Internet Archive is in the Taylor Library at Oxford, described as “COPY ONE” and accessioned on “4 – May. 1938” – so it could be a copy perused or read by any of the Inklings from then on (it was “Confined to the Library” – but perhaps dons could get special permission to borrow it…?).
I suppose that, if Williams didn’t already know Evans’s High History of the Holy Graal, Lewis would have introduced him to it, since Lewis loved it so well.
If Williams discovered it early on, by himself, might it have helped to move him to spell the word more familiarly spelled “Grail” as “Graal” — as well as the example of A. E. Waite influencing Williams, presumably? Did Waite pick up “Graal” rather than “Grail” from Evans (1898)?
I wonder too if the Evans book meant something to Arthur Machen. Machen is best known for some early horror stories such as “The Great God Pan,” but he wrote essays on the Grail and at least two stories — the unsatisfactory novel The Secret Glory, and the moving long short story “The Great Return” — deal with it. “Graal” was Machen’s preferred spelling, as I recall. He was, of course, a friend of Waite.
But to return to the Inklings — I am thinking now that The High History of the Holy Graal has been, as it were, hiding in plain sight all this time, and was actually a key text at least for CSL and Williams. Now comes the temptation to indulge in confirmation bias, of course.
But there is some intriguing evidence that I haven’t mentioned yet:
It was in CSL’s personal library: The High History of the Holy Graal, translated from the French by Sebastian Evans. 4th ed. London: J. M. dent, 1907. 2 vols. (The Temple Classics) “C. S. Lewis’ copy, with his annotations,” is recorded.
The 1898 edition of Evans was cited in Tolkien and Gordon’s edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
More excitingly, the 1913 Dent reprint of the High History was in “Tolkien’s personal Celtic library, preserved at the Weston library under the auspices of the English Faculty Library (Oxford)” — Cilli, Tolkien’s Library, p. 84.
And David has said that Williams wrote about the Evans edition. David, can we state firmly that Williams owned a copy? Clearly he cared about this book, whether or not he owned one. I hardly doubt that he did. It should be remembered that this would have been a pretty easy book to come by. Dent was a major publisher — perhaps it would not be too terribly misleading to say the firm was something like the Penguin Books of its day.
Dale Nelson 19 Sept 19
The Evans translation, The High History of the Holy Graal, certainly was in the Everyman’s Library, which really was the Penguin Classics of its day.
http://scribblemonger.com/elcollect/elJackets.pl?sn=0445.1
So, again, this was a book easy to come by.
DN 19 Sept 19
Arthur Machen certainly knew Sebastian Evans’s High History of the Holy Graal. He argues against a theory of Evans in his (Machen’s) essay “The Secret of the Sangraal,” reprinted in a collection called The Shining Pyramid (London: Secker, 1925). I haven’t read this long essay yet.
DN 19 Sept 19
A discovery — I think!
Readers of this blog may know Lewis’s poem “Lancelot” (as it is titled in Narrative Poems) / When the Year Dies in Preparation for the Birth (as it’s titled in Don King’s critical edition of Lewis’s poems.
That poem leads up to a horrifying moment in which a damsel, the Queen of Castle Mortal, reveals to Lancelot, who is under the influence of her drugs, that she has rigged up a device for beheading Lamorake, Tristram, and Lancelot in her chapel. Then she means to hold their heads to her breasts and adore them. The poem is a true piece of weird writing.
The incident must surely derive from Perlesvaus, in Sebastian Evans’s translation (The High History of the Holy Graal). Here the knight is Gawaine. The lady is known as the Proud Maiden and has a custom of not troubling to ask the names of nights who come there. The lady tells Gawain — presumably not knowing who he is — that she means to behead Lancelot, Gawain, and Perceval in her chapel — they will kneel to venerate three coffers of saints, and, as in Lewis’s poem, a guillotine-like blade will rush down and decapitate them. Gawain simply leaves the castle in the morning. The text has not said this is the Castle Mortal, but “Castle Mortal” has been mentioned in it.
I think the Lewis poem has been regarded as an unfinished work, but it’s likely that Lewis regarded it as a complete draft. The fact that it ends as it does makes sense in terms of its source, if I’m correct in thinking that’s the Perlesvaus, where Gawain does not have a narrow escape just as Lancelot didn’t, and each knight evidently simply leaves (perhaps with a great shudder).
As a teenager, Lewis praised the Perlesvaus to Arthur, struck by its “eerie” quality, as he said. Indeed. His own poem works out that eeriness.
Dale Nelson 20 Sept 19
What great additional details! I need to go checking, but as far as I remember, Williams noted its existence early, without discussing any details. I can’t remember if ‘we’ know if he owned it, or not – as you say, it would be easy and comparatively inexpensive to come by (but also available in all sorts of libraries, I expect). I tend of think of Everyman as the pre-Penguin Penguins, too (now where do the Oxford World Classics fit into this picture…?). I suppose Williams was rereading/browsing pretty widely in working on The Figure of Arthur – but can also imagine that that prep would easily form part of Inklings conversations – maybe Lewis lent C.W. his Evans to brush up at his convenience? (Do ‘we’ know how easy a book-lender Lewis was?) I wonder about those Graal/Grail choices in various circumstances… but do not remember any discussion as to why which where and when.
I wonder if Tolkien’s copy is annotated? And, do ‘we’ know if Barfield had it, as well as the Everyman Malory? Some fun further checking, for someone – or some team of scholars!
I poked around earlier today and didn’t turn up evidence definitely linking Barfield with the Sebastian Evans book — as likely as, it seems to me, it is that Barfield would indeed have encountered it.
The Oxford World’s Classics look more upscale to me than the Everyman’s Library offerings, but they might have cost the same, or almost the same. Lewis, in one of my favorite passages in Surprised by Joy
(–I am just loving this discussion–)
recalls things thus: “Your Everyman was then [when he was an adolescent] a bare shilling, and, what is more, always in stock; your World’s Classic, Muses’ Library, Home University Library, Temple Classic, … at proportionate prices. All the money I could spare went in postal orders to Messrs. Denny of the Strand. No days, even at Bookham, were happier than those on which the afternoon post brought a neat little parcel in dark gray paper. Milton, Spenser, Malory, THE HIGH HISTORY OF THE HOLY GRAIL, the Laxdale Saga, Ronsard, Chenier, Voltaire, Beowulf and Gawain and the Green Knight (both in translations), Apuleius, the Kalevala, Herrick, Walton, Sir John Mandeville, Sidney’s Arcadia, and nearly all of Morris, came volume by volume into my hands.” [end of Chapter 9 of S by J]
It sounds there as if Lewis might be looking at these books as he writes, though he might, of course, have been writing from memory.
Dale Nelson 19 Sept 19
The German Wikipedia “Perlesvaus” article sent me to the Internet Archive (since its own external link did not work) for the complete 1889 translation from Potvin’s edition by Gerhard Gietmann, S.J., in Ein Gralbuch – of which there are two scans, there. I browsed the U. California one, which had a couple scanning defects… The translation is sandwiched between a introduction from pages [v]-lv, and 261 pages of further (contextual) scholarly discussion. He says the manuscript is untitled (p. xxix) and (as far as I can see) does not further discuss conventions as to how the work is referred to.
I also looked up a source known to Williams, [Gustavus] Howard Maynadier’s The Arthur of the English Poets (1907), of which there are two scans, to see what he says. There are three index entries for “Evans, Sebastian, […] High History of the Holy Grail” [sic]. The first (p. 115, footnote 2), says, “This Perlesvaus, as the author wrote the name, has been admirably translated”. He begins a discussion on page 131 of “The prose Perceval, or Holy Grail” with a footnote (2) clarifying this is “The Perlesvaus previously referred to, translated by Dr. Sebastian Evans”, a discussion – in comparison with the work of “a later writer” who “superseded Perceval with a new hero, whom he called Galahad” – which continues until page 134, referring on page 133 to “the prose Perceval, translated from the French into beautiful archaic English by Dr. Sebastian Evans”.
Now, Williams quotes from a later part of the discussion of Galahad (p. 136) in The Descent of the Dove (1939), without mentioning Maynadier or the book by name. So, it seems not unlikely that he may have re-encountered the discussion of the work and favorable references to Evans’s translation, while working on The Descent – though without necessarily taking it up to read at that point. (It is curious Maynadier says (p. 115) it “was composed […] probably, unlike the others, originally in prose”, while Williams calls it a “poem” in The Figure of Arthur – though he could mean ‘work of fiction’ by poem, rather than mistakenly thinking Evans had made a prose translation of a verse romance.)
Here it is:
https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_3N0FAAAAQAAJ/page/n1
Curiously, we see that it had previously belonged to the German philologist and literary historian, Albert Leitzmann (1867-1950), who, according to his German Wikipedia article, retired in 1935, after which he concentrated on, among other things, updating his edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach – but does not seem to have fled Nazi Germany… so how did it end up in Oxford? Was he already feeling the financial pinch noted by the Wikipediast so early in his retirement, and selling some of his books? Or did he have happy Oxford contacts?
The Lewises were real Francophones – Warnie obviously read Seventeenth-century French with ease – what (if any) implications did this have for ease of reading Old French? One also wonders if Jack got Warnie reading Evans – and if it’s somewhere in his diaries? (The evidence of Warnie’s Arthurian reading in the Brothers & Friends selection strikes me (working with the index just now) as somewhat elusive – there’s a fascinating glimpse of his first interest in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on 8 April 1930, and his only getting around to reading it with delight in translation in 1967 (10 August, q.v.), where he calls it “a poem which I often heard Tolkien praise in the old days.”)
Has anything useful turned up in Cilli’s Tolkien’s Library about mediaeval French sources? Professor Paul J. Smith has a paper in Tolkien Among Scholars (Lembas Extra 2016) about “French Connections in Middle-earth: The Medieval Legacy”.
John Garth’s done some great work in noting which books Tolkien had out of the Exeter College Library – perhaps something similar remains to be done re. Lewis and the Magdalen College Library – certainly lots to be done as to who called up which books in the Bodleian in the old days, when this was entered in ledgers, which survive!
This is well on its way, but a couple of thoughts on the first question.
Beyond Gawain, Malory and Spenser, a CSL reader should also know Chretien pretty well, and Layamon’s Brut. Perhaps after those, reading “Allegory of Love” is way to go.
Ah. I thought of Spenser — love the Faerie Queene! But I was thinking in terms of restricting ourselves to medieval works.
They key to Narnia is The Faerie Queene and vice versa, I’m tempted to say. Of course that’s an exaggeration.
That strikes me as very much ‘on target’, with an eye to the relaxed mixture of ‘things’, especially creatures, in both Spenser and Narnia – though if I had read more Ariosto (in Barbara Reynolds’ translation), I might think it an apt example as well.
Aha — happily, a visit to the unheated (it’s below zero herein North Dakota) outbuilding where many of my books are stored brought to light
Chretien de Troyes – Arthurian Romances (tr. Kibler for Penguin Classics)
Wace and Layamon – Arthurian Chronicles (tr. Evans, Everyman paperback)
Geoffrey of Monmouth – History of the Kings of Britain (tr. Thorpe, Penguin Classics)
Marie de France – Lais (tr. Burgess and Busby, Peng. Classics)
One more: Gerald of Wales’s Journey Through Wales and Description of Wales, the latter of which has a couple or so brief Arthurian mentions (translated by Thorpe, Penguin Classics).
Lovely! Some pretty ‘classic’ mentions, if I recall aright!
Aha! Your reply, David, helps us to identify two distinct topics for discussion.
First: What were the actual Arthurian editions that the Inklings read – and at what points in their lives did they read them? Thus, for example, a good guess would be that, as a youth, C. S. Lewis read Caxton’s presentation of Malory’s Morte, in an Everyman’s Library offering of several volumes. Later in life, Lewis would have studied Vinaver’s Malory editions. To write his unfinished “Figure of Arthur,” Williams would, I suppose, have wanted to read scholarly editions of “everything” relating to the Matter of Logres. (How much of his reading in that vast forest of material would have postdated his writing of Taliessin Through Logres, at least?) As scholars, Lewis and Williams, perhaps Tolkien too, must have been widely read in medieval Arthurian sources. In this connection we would want to be sure of consulting books actually available to them – ruling out my Penguins, certainly for Williams. Your reply specifies some contemporary-to-the-Inklings books.
Second: What books do Inklings-oriented readers need to know as primary sources (not encyclopedias, histories of literature, etc.) that contained important characters and concepts for the Inklings’ own imaginative use of the Matter of Logres? For example, if a reader is curious about Merlin thanks to his role in That Hideous Strength, will he or she find everything or nearly everything in Malory’s Morte? My comment was with reference to this second purpose, and so I hazarded the guess that Malory plus Sir Gawain and the Green Knight would actually suffice for many readers – my hunch being that there’s very little in the Inklings’ imaginative handling of the Matter of Logres that is not found in those two sources, especially Malory: Merlin, the begetting of Arthur, the sword in the stone, Guenever and Lancelot, courtly love, the ideals of the Round Table, the Fisher-King, the Dolorous Blow, the Grail adventures, the calamity of the civil war between Mordred’s forces and Arthur’s, Avalon…
Not having my copy of Dr. Higgins’ book yet, I don’t know if it lists the Arthurian books that the Inklings are known to have read, but you have provided a partial bibliography of the sort.
It might be appropriate during the upcoming discussions for two bibliographies, along these lines, to be compiled. They could be subdivided for which author(s), or when a given book was listed, it could be followed, in parentheses, by the name(s) of the Inkling(s) for whom the source was, or appears to be (the distinction is important), significant.
Dale Nelson
I did rather mush those two together! I think Caxton’s Malory is essential for all of them, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is obviously important for Tolkien as scholar and thinker – and, I think, to The Lord of the Rings, where the failures and success of Gawain and Frodo invite comparison and contrast – and certainly to Lewis more generally (there is that lovely photo I’ve seen somewhere of some of Lewis’s marginalia in his copy of Tolkien’s edition).
I had also meant to mention that a lot of the relevant Everyman’s are scanned in the Internet Archive – and searchable! (I’m not sure how many of them appeared first as Temple Classics, but some certainly did, which may have been a way young Inklings met them, as well.)
Would like to know where to find the image(s) of Lewis’s marginal writing on Tolkien’s Gawain.
I would love to see that too, honestly.
Maybe it’s in Walter Hooper’s Through Joy and Beyond: A Pictorial Biography of C.S. Lewis (1982) – ? I have such a vivid mental image of it – especially, Lewis’s sketching items of armour described in detail – but don’t know that we have whatever it’s in anywhere on our shelves…
Nope — not in Through Joy and Beyond…
On p. 91 in _Through Joy and Beyond_ there’s a picture of Lewis in his Magdalen office with a row of books across about head high. Some of the books’ titles look readable with a magnifying glass.
Wow Joe, that’s super precise.
Maybe in the Through Joy and Beyond movie?
My mental image is of a b&w photo in a book/periodical…
Is that film even available anywhere?
And, David, it would be good to note what post-medieval sources were (a) certainly known to a given Inkling, (b) likely known to a given Inkling, and/or (c) maybe not known to any Inkling, but sho’ ’nuff of a kindred spirit.
Which of those — a, b, or c — do you think would best describe Arthur Machen’s Grail wonder-tale “The Great Return”? Note to anyone who hasn’t read it: This story is a must if you are interested in something that is like an overlooked short story or novella by Charles Williams. Yet, so far as I know, there is no evidence that -any- of the Inklings had read it. Lewis’s library as catalogued in 1969 contained a 1948 book by Machen, Tales of Horror — I take it this was probably Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, which I further guess contained “The Great Return” (which is not a horror story). But to my knowledge Lewis never, anywhere, mentions Machen. The Machen book, whether it contained “Great Return” or not, might have been one of Joy’s books, and might be something Lewis never perused. “The Great Return” is one of the notable “Inklings stories not by an Inkling,” but perhaps no Inkling read it. You’ve pointed out to me a few intriguing indications of Williams having read some Machen (e.g. the horror story “The Great God Pan” anyway). But what about this one?
Dale Nelson
Indeed! I can’t remember a “Great Return” reference for any of them, but it does seem likely (though, indeed, ‘likely’ is not ‘certainly’). I think I read it (thanks to Lovecraft putting me onto Machen?) – with great delight – before I read anything by any Inkling!
Wow: what a great experience: to read and love Machen’s “Great Return” and then…discover…that…there’s this author Charles Williams, and……!
It will be interesting to see if the forthcoming discussions confirm (or not) the notion that the Matter of Logres was of importance to the following authors in descending degree:
Charles Williams — here the importance of the Matter of Logres is obvious, with the cycle of his mature poetry, plus use in his novel War in Heaven, and as the subject of some nonfiction writing
C. S. Lewis — the Matter of Logres becomes central for Lewis’s science fiction trilogy, though this is not obvious at first; the chivalric world more generally is basic for the Narnian books; there’s also Lewis’s “Lancelot” poem (which begins “When the year dies in preparation for the birth”), etc.
J. R. R. Tolkien — we have had to reconsider its importance now that The Fall of Arthur is before us — but wasn’t this largely a “sport” in Tolkien’s imaginative work? Of course there’sthe general importance of chivalry in his work…
Owen Barfield — this could be a peculiar discussion; the Grail is important, as I understand, in some anthroposophic activity, and that would matter to Barfield, but otherwise is the Matter of Logres important to him?
Dale Nelson
This has been a good discussion Dale and David. Dale, do you think you have something here for a speculative post about how to read “behind” the Arthurian mental bookshelf of the Inklings?
Something like that might develop as these discussions continue. Right now possibilities are popping up everywhere, and I am having to resist the temptation to buy several books to add to my emotionally-burdensome backlog.
Other than Amazon, are there any other web sites I can order “The Inklings & King Arthur” book?
I believe it might even be a little cheaper at Barnes and Noble.
I’m in Canada, so Amazon is the man in charge. But if we are not in a hurry, we usually get our local store to bring it in. For 2/3 of new books, there is no difference in price.
I’m in Australia. Do you know if Barnes and Noble ship to Australia or if Amazon Australia will sell it?
I’m not sure it’s in Canada.
Reblogged this on Wisdom from The Lord of the Rings and commented:
Dear friends,
Here at the beginning of a new year a book has been published of considerable importance. A year in the he court of King Arthur was shaped by the great feasts of the liturgical year, Christmas, Easter and Pentecost among the highest of them. At such times the court would not sit to eat until a sign from heaven had been granted to them that they could do so. In the middle years of the 20th century the Inklings showed us that the miraculous pervades the very nature of things in our day just as it did for Camelot. Could I then encourage you in the midst of the Christmas feast (Twelfth Night is on Friday January 5th and followed by the Feast of the Epiphany on Saturday) to expect the wondrous in this dark time of the year (northern hemisphere!). Read this post from Brenton Dickieson and buy the book. It will deepen the way in which you read The Inklings and it will make the world strange again but more wonderful yet.
Stephen, thanks for mentioning the importance of the Church calendar for Malory’s Morte. That’s a topic worth discussion here by itself.
DN
A good point – which also gets me wondering if this is something in which Williams is deliberately following Malory, at least in part, with his great Feast and other liturgical-year references in his Arthurian poetry. (‘Son of Lancelot’ springs to mind particularly.)
A very kind Canon with whom I had been discussing my sadly insufficiently informed love of liturgy gave me a Dutch translation of the Roman Breviary for Christmas, and reading the Office for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, I was struck by the wintry imagery of one of the sermon excerpts included, which got me wondering both if this may have contributed to Charles Williams’s distinctive characterization of King Cradlemas in ‘The Calling of Arthur’, where Merlin tells Arthur:
The waste of snow covers the waste of thorn;
on the waste of hovels snow falls from a dreary sky;
mallet and scythe are silent; the children die.
King Cradlemas fears that the winter is hard for the poor.
and also whether it may have contributed to Lewis’s development of the White Witch’s making it “always winter and never Christmas”.
Thanks so much, Stephen. That’s an approach I wouldn’t have thought of!
I just ordered my copy. I think Amazon are sending it by stagecoach across the USA and clipper across the Atlantic. I can’t wait to receive it.
It’s funny, I can’t order from the US, and the Canada price is WAY higher (like far above the currency conversion differential). I’ll wait and see what happens!
Thanks for the note and the reblog!
Oh dear 🤔 I am sure it will be worth it!
This is so exciting! Thank you for sharing this wonderful news! I need to save up my money to buy it, but I will keep this post in my email so I may remember to. And yes, I shall surely review it in my blog. I’m currently doing studies on C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien right now. 😀
It is very cool, actually. If money is tight, another option is to suggest it to your local libraries.
Yes, do encourage one or another local library to which you have access to buy it – then you’ll be helping benefit any number of other readers, too! (I used to work in a public library…)
Is there a TOC available anywhere?
Found it!
https://theoddestinkling.wordpress.com/2017/05/17/fund-king-arthurs-return/
Thanks! I ended up ordering it.
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