A few weeks ago, I published Part 1 of “C.S. Lewis and the Art of Blurbology,” aiming to provide a review of Justin Keena’s C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist (2025) that would be useful to readers and researchers. Besides its practicality, I commented on the sheer good fun of Justin’s efforts in this newest contribution to the Journal of Inklings Studies supplement series.
The term, “Blurbology,” is one of the words that Lewis made up in his own jesting way, drawing from American street-speak that had begun to define the publishing industry.
Once we know what a “blurb” is, “blurbology” falls quickly into place as almost inevitable–one of the words bound to emerge eventually, even as a joke. We don’t know when Lewis or one of his friends first coined the word. However, if you learned cursive (or can trust my partial transcription), we know when he first uses it: a 1950 letter to Roger Lancelyn Green (see full transcription in the original review).
My dear Roger
Thanks v. much for the blurb [for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe]: I shall send it to [publisher] Bles to-day. It seems excellent to me, but like you I don’t really understand Blurbology.
Yours
Jack Lewis
While Lewis claims not to know much about the art of Blurbology, Justin Keena’s careful study reveals Lewis’ principles of the craft:
- Blurbs should be accurate
- Quotations should rarely be used, and used only when they don’t misrepresent the book or interrupt its enjoyment (i.e., no spoilers)
- Blurbs should capture the author’s intentions for the reading experience
In the earlier review, I talked about each of these ideas and gave examples from the text of the various features of the book. One of the most inconsequential—or possibly irrelevant … at least, idiosyncratic—reasons I split up this review is because I want to talk about the manner in which we read books. I don’t mean “manner” in any sophisticated way, like when I’ve talked about “Different Kinds of Readings for Different Kinds of Books.” No, this time I simply mean that when we read, do we go through page after page, sequentially, or read in some other pattern?
Generally, reading the pages in order is recommended. While I could open any page of Tom Jones and find funny, smart, and mind-numbing storytelling that seems completely disconnected to everything else—and thus, containing a demonically 18th-century kind of unity. However, I would not approach Till We Have Faces, The Lord of the Rings, Anne of Green Gables, The Fionavar Tapestry, or Dracula that way. I can open any of those well-worn books and pick up the tale, but I would not read all the way through, say, Pride & Prejudice, by randomizing the chapters. Even though I think most abridgments should be made illegal, I enjoyed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as a way of re-experiencing the Jane Austen classic. But even that hatchet job of an adaptation keeps everything in the right order.
Perhaps it is my nostalgia for the Choose Your Own Adventure books of my youth, but there is something to be said about reading anthologies, essay collections, and other kinds of resource books in a seemingly random kind of way.
For example, I was recently interviewing some grad students about Acorn Press’ 2024 ANNEthology—a collection of ten Anne-inspired stories by Canadian YA writers. While I was initially inclined to say “no” to the project because I was angry with myself for not thinking of the title before they did, it turned out to be a brilliant discussion.
To make six stories connect—each one represented by the reading experience of six relative strangers—I jumped into the volume with the piece that most interested me. Then I daisy-chained the readings by their qualities, like fantasy vs. realism, dystopian vs. historical, and so on. See? An enjoyable Choose Your Own Adventure set of tales! If I get killed by zombies, develop galloping consumption, or get lost in nostalgia, I can always take a step back and try again.
This is the kind of approach I used with Justin Keena’s C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist, with marvelous success. Besides the intro, the book has three main sections:
- Part One: Lewis’ Blurbs for His Own Books
- Part Two: Lewis’ Blurbs for Others’ Books
- Appendix: Blurbs for Lewis’ Books (Probably) Written by Others
Each of these sections includes the blurb in question and Justin’s notes about the historical provenance and importance of the blurb, with longer discussions about what parts of the blurb are definitively or possibly Lewis’. These copiously footnoted studies are usually brief—though some run as long as 10 pages. Other than this 20-page introduction, the other general editorial comments are brief.
The game was this: When I encountered a footnote that linked to another blurbological study in the book, I would pause my reading and follow that link. Soon, I wondered two things:
- How much of the book could I read before getting through the 20-page intro?
- How many levels deep could I go chasing footnotes?
Do you see it? The second question was less precise for me, but I was at least 5 levels deep: Intro footnote to a blurb to its reference or footnote at least three more times, then walking back and finishing each section as I went, finally returning to the Intro.
The first question is a bit more fun: How much of the book could I read before getting through the 20-page intro and its four main sections? Here’s the cold, hard data:
Section 1: Lewis’s Attitude to Blurbs and Blurb-Writing:
- 23/26 of Part One blurbs (88.4%)
- 8/26 of Part Two blurbs (30.8%)
- 12/36 of Appendix blurbs (33.3%)
Section 2: Scope and Methodology
- + 1/26 of Part One blurbs (+3.8% = 92.3%)
- + 2/26 of Part Two blurbs (+7.6% = 38.5%)
- + 16/36 of Appendix blurbs (+44.4% = 77.8%)
Section 3: Identifying and Authenticating Lewis’s Blurbs for his own Books
Section 4: Conclusion and Further Directions
- + 2/26 of Part One blurbs (+7.7% = 100%)
- + 10/26 of Part Two blurbs (+ 27.7% = 76.9%)
- + 0/36 of Appendix blurbs (+0% – 77.8%)
Thus, in the first 15 pages, I had read more than half of the book. By the time I had read the introduction, I had read 9/10 of Lewis’ self-blurbs, 4/10 of his blurbs for others, and 3/4 of recovered blurbs for Lewis’ books. Jumping to the conclusion, I increased the first two categories to 10/10 and 3/4. Ultimately only 14/88 blurbs remained—about 30 pages of the 220-page book.
That means that I was able to read 6/7 of C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist in my Choose Your Own Adventure format. Pretty cool. Moreover, I didn’t fall into peril, like some many readers of the genre. I didn’t enter a secret door and fall to my death, or choose the path to the undefeatable ogre, or make friends with a villain. I “won” the book my first time through!
Granted, not many people will read Blurbologist my way—or even read it cover to cover. It is a resource book, written in tight, non-self-indulgent sections so that researchers can get what they need and fans can check up on their favourite books. As I had agreed to read the book, though, I was going to read the entire thing. So why not make a game of it?
Not that the material is flippant, of course—even when some Lewis letter or a note by the editors is humorous. Quite a number of the blurbs in Parts One and Two are new additions to C.S. Lewis’ archive of published material. Beyond Justin Keena’s more fully fleshed-out theory of “Lewisian Blurbology,” I was able to make a number of connection to my other projects. The book is also a good source for seeing another dimension of Lewis’ habits of writing, storytelling, and worldbuilding.
And the project works. At points, I would pause and sketch a note to the effect of, “I don’t think CSL used this word.” For example, on the dust jacket front flap of the UK That Hideous Strength, I had doubts that Lewis used the words “thriller” and “shocker.”
In this volume – which comes nearer to a full-dress novel than anything he has yet given us – C.S. Lewis relates the final adventure of Dr. Ransom, now returned from his planetary travels and living on the outskirts of an English University town. This restriction of the scene to Earth does not mean that the story is less mythical (the author calls it ‘a fairy-tale’) than Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. It means that the Senior Common Room at Bracton College, the quarrel between Jane Studdock and her husband, the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, the tame bear, and the deeply wronged fields and villages of England are here given that more than earthly background, that dimension of depth which such things (in the author’s view) always have in real life, though not in realistic fiction. The central danger – the ‘hideous strength’ – will be enjoyed by all who like a good shocker: it will also have more serious repercussions for those who may have read the author’s Abolition of Man.
Anticipating my concern, Justin carefully presented an argument that shows where and how Lewis used these words and the ideas in the last two sentences. Concluding with a logical claim, Justin identifies which parts of the blurb are most probably Lewis’ (which I have bolded), while the rest may be the publisher’s phrasing.
So, I gamified the experience of reading C.S. Lewis, Blurbologist. What did this particular approach to reading do for me?
First, it was more fun. Like most children, I love stats, challenges, and games. People always say that reading is its own reward, but why should be stop there? Why not also celebrate a reading badge or post a picture of a pencil worked down to its nub or feel pride at a bookshelf filled with things I’ve actually read?
Second, the fact that I finished most of the book while reading the short introduction shows how integrated Justin’s approach really is. Certainly, he presents copious examples for his claims in this exemplar of evidence-driven scholarly work. On a deeper level, though, Justin’s research echoes one of C.S. Lewis’ key features–that he is a single person. Despite wearing different hats and having incompatible interests, Lewis is not a mixed set of personalities, a collection of contradictory homunculi in the chest of an Oxford don. As we see in the diversity of the blurbs he writes and those written for him, Lewis the literary critic is in unity with Lewis the fantasy writer and Lewis the theologian. Justin’s project of interleaving text and commentary echoes Lewis’s creative practice.
Finally, this may shock you, but not every resource text, archival report, or work of literary criticism is unputdownable. I am a slow reader, so this approach kept me pinned to the page and helped make reviewing this book–writing reviews fills me with dread, I’m afraid to say–something to look forward to. My notes and games help keep me on task as much reading spreadsheets and Goodreads updates, helping me engage with the reading using different parts of my brain.
So … how will you read Blurbologist or your next Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-friendly book?
Posts of Interest
When will blurbs be solicited for *your* book, dear Brenton? Inquiring minds want to know.
Dana
Jeepers Dana, that’s sweet! I was told that OUP doesn’t do blurbs, but I have also heard that some are solicited for a blurb. Perhaps I should create my own “blurb insert” for the book? But the good news is that it is dropping May or June!
So nice to have an actual date – and OUP, my stars, I did not know the book was coming to us from so high in the academic atmosphere! Good on you. Do let us know when the issue date is decided. A link to the OUP page for it will be good, too. Oh boy, I’m excited to have one, and I also want to send one to Fr Andrew Cuneo, who I’m sure will enjoy it.
Dana
Well, Dana, it was partly due to your beta reading that OUP was interested. I have always appreciated the help and encouragement. I will certainly share more anon.
Dana Ames made me suddenly reflect that in the past year, I have begun a so-far brief life as blurbologist myself – a curious experience.
Somewhat – but perhaps not entirely – tangentially, I am astonished at Giuseppe Pezzini’s mastery of cross-reference in Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation – and also at the lack of mentions of page-numbers in the process. And I was just wondering if this had anything to do with a world of simultaneous digital- and bound-book publication.
Hi David, Dana always makes me reflect! Do you make a lot of money as a blurbologist? I have my doubts.
I am hearing 20 good things about Pezzini’s book. I suspect it’ll be Mythopoeic Award nominated.
No page #s? Is it a scroll perhaps?
I’m a Pro Deo blurbologist, so far!
It has page-numbers as a book, but the cross-references don’t: – instead, using its intricate and lucid system of chapters, sections, sub-sections. But I was wondering if multiple-format publication had anything to do with it.
And, boy it it the opposite of exhaustive where the Index – which does have page-numbers – is involved: again, maybe because ‘digital forms’ are searchable?
Yes, the page number things are changing. An eBook can be dynamic. But I have just been tasked with indexing my book, and it is not a lovely job. I’m just finishing a good Lewis book with a less than awesome index now, and I understand why: it’s the author’s job and no one wants to look at their book that closely at that point in the game.
Whew! I was wondering how that tended to work – I seem to remember many a year ago sometimes running into authors acknowledging professional indexers, but have no sense how common or unusual that ever was, and would not be surprised if it is very rare, now – unless perhaps somehow ‘digitally’ transformed.
Prof. Dickieson,
First off, thanks are in order for continuing with, and granting readers this interesting review of Keena’s “Blurbologist” text. Reviewing the work of the critic is a different kettle of fish from that of an example of fiction or, in this case, non-fiction. However, what stands out to me the most is the way you’ve chosen to approach the literary study in conjunction with interactions from other texts. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of treating it as a game. At the same time, that may be because I am having fun enough being engaged in just a simple, straight-forward read-through that it’s like I didn’t even need such a prompting because the act reading was already a kind of play for me.
With that said, it is interesting to compare notes between otherwise unrelated text browsing processes. If I had to come up with a name for the way I get drawn into this kind of ricochet approach (where lighting upon a “potential” understanding of the meaning of this image, that motif, or any “possible” narrative pattern) can sometimes send me leap-frogging between volumes in search of any plausible seeming connective tissue, then the best marketing title I’ve got is “Spot the Allusion”. It’s the simplest Game Tag I’ve got that sums up the way I tend to approach things. Thanks to Mythopoeia critics like Jem Bloomfield, I’ve sort of begun to learn how to pay attention to the way authors sometimes allude to the books that Inspired them in their own fictions. A practical example of this line of study that’s drawn from personal experience comes from the pages of a book I’ve just begun. It’s called “King Sorrow”, by Joe Hill.
What makes this American Gothic Fantasy text a good comparison sample is down to the way the author alludes to, and hence “might” wear his Inspirations on his sleeve. For instance, in the book’s second chapter, one of the main characters muses on the question of “If I get into Magdalen”. Hill then gives the reader the following info drop. “He shrank from even talking about it, the school where his father had earned his master’s in English literature. As a teenager, Arthur had done his homework under a framed poster of C. S. Lewis and had experimented with wearing tweed. Dark days (8, American Hardcover edition, 2025)”. It’s an eyebrow raising moment to stumble upon, which is all the better for not expecting it to happen. Just a few leaves later, on page 17, the author writes: “It’s on the corner of McDonald and Lang (ibid)”. Now that’s the part that really got my interest. A major reason for why that passage jumped out at me was because of its selective, almost hermetic quality as a potential in-joke.
By choosing those two monikers, Hill has just listed the names of a pair of writers and scholars who would go on to have a determining impact on the life and career of the two major Inklings. The trick in this tale is that this is not a widely shared bit of information. All of it is available to the general public, yet it’s also not something that even a lot of die-hard “LOTR” or “Narnia” fans seem to care enough about to find out how authors like McDonald and Lang mattered so much to Lewis and Tolkien, respectively. If this was a kind of allusive hint on Hill’s part, then it’s an example of the artist being clever with and about his sources of Inspiration. The further trick becomes deciding whether or not it’s possible to learn more about the way in which the writer utilizes these allusions. Is it just a casual thing, or is there more in terms of a possible artistic influence to be had, and how can this be found out?
At least the beginnings of an answer become discernable when we turn from “King Sorrow” to the Introduction pages (no more than 10 to 15 total) of Hill’s anthology collection, “Full Throttle”. It’s there that Hill drops an interesting bit of personal trivia on the reader. “My dad read to me about the Green Goblin, but my mother read to me about Narnia. Her voice was (is) as calming as the first snowfall of the year. She read about betrayal and cruel slaughter with the same patient certainty that she read about resurrection and salvation. She is not a religious woman, but to hear her read is to feel a little as if you’re being led into a soaring Gothic cathedral, filled with light and a roomy sense of space. I remember Aslan dead on the stone and the mice nibbling at the ropes that bound his corpse. I think that provided me with my foundational sense of decency. To live a decent life is to be no more than a mouse nibbling at a rope. One mouse isn’t much, but if enough of us keep chewing, we may set something free that can save us from the worst. Maybe it will even save us from ourselves. I also still believe that books operate along the same principles as “enchanted wardrobes. You climb into that little space and come out the other side in a vast and secret world, a place both more frightening and more wonderful than your own (5, American Trade Paperback edition, 2020)”.
Finally, in an interview presented in part by “Locus Magazine Online”, Hill details his career as a young Middle Earth fanboy, with a particular fondness for the dragon Smaug, which fueled and supplied his Imagination for the title villain of his most recent novel. When all of these bits of information are placed together, what the reader is left with amounts to a portrait of an artist as at least a “potential” Mythopoeia fan. One for whom the writings of both Tolkien and Lewis seem to have left an overall positive enough impact, at the very least on the son of Stephen King. It is difficult to say more beyond this point, except to note that Hill seems more kindly disposed to the ideas of Lewis’s “Narnia” series than one might have expected. An added bonus of being able to tease out the Mythopoeic strands in back of Hill’s Inspiration is that it means a novel such as “King Sorrow” might be an interesting test subject for a theory proposed earlier on this site. Namely that it is possible to trace a line of literary descent from Edmund Spenser’s “Faerie Queene” all the way up to the contemporary Horror genre as we still have it today. A novel like “King Sorrow” could count as a text full of Spenserian “relics”.
In marshaling these facts, all I’m doing is to give a basis of comparison for how others play the “Game” that you mention. Assuming that it’s “quellenforschung, or source hunting, that we’re talking about here, then I suppose my approach is best described as more slap-dash, in a way. There’s nothing statistical about it, in the strictest sense. Rather than crunching the stats, the whole process described above is akin to assembling the pieces of a potential puzzle together, and the kicker is that even when an image does begin to present itself its still vague in the theoretical way that all literary criticism is. It takes a very bookish frame of mind for a result like that to act as a spur for further exploration. For whatever reason, I was blessed with that kind sympathy. It’s like a piece of extra, added-on skill that can get sharpened into some kind of ability with the handling of books and stories. In the case of Keena’s study, it sounds like what we’ve got here is one of those studies that functions as a good test of the reader’s skill. It offers the challenge of seeing just how far one can take their own enthusiasm for the written word in terms of hunting down further avenues of Lewis’s thoughts as writer and reader. Sounds like the kind of book I’ll need to get a copy of ASAP. Also, comments by Hill on Tolkien can be found here:
https://locusmag.com/feature/joe-hill-king-sorrow/
Yes Chris, perhaps “play” is a better word for reading as a whole, isn’t it? I’m in this bookclub and we are going through UK children’s fantasy of the 60s and 70s. I’m reading that page to page–“normally”, we might say. But long ago I set up the game of reading C.S. Lewis chronologically, pacing it with the letters. For work reading and rereading, I like changing the rules.
Choose-Your-Own-Adventure I called this one, but “ricochet approach” and “leapfrogging” are great approaches. A lot of us play “Spot the Allusion” (Tag … or Tig for some), I game I called Hyperlinking Worlds in a chapter a few years back.
Joe Hill is totally new to me. Is “King Sorrow” the place to start? I’m amazed by these Inklings connections. Perhaps we should pull this into a guest post on “Introducing Joe Hill on the Inklings,” not too long, but hints about the “tag” reading effect–or what I call the effect of the authors bookshelves appearing in their books.
Prof. Dickieson,
If I had to come up with one other name for the type of “Game” you’re suggesting here, then it might have to be “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. It’s taken from the T.S. Eliot essay of the same name, and while it’s technically the most uninspired, there’s also a sense in which it could be viewed as the most exact. Because in spite of making a number of critical errors, it is possible to claim that Eliot was onto something when he described all great literature as a kind of borrowing from the store house of accumulated artistry left behind by storytellers of the past. He believed that this could allow any acute critic to scry the depths of an Individual Talent not just by what sources they draw upon, but also whether and how it frames the uses to which Tradition is put toward in the composition of the next current tale. There’s a lot more Eliot’s point than this, yet it functions as a good descriptor of the type of source game you seem to be thinking of. One of the benefits of Eliot’s model here is that it does allow both artist and audience to view the poems and books they like as strands in a larger tapestry of narrative, one that future generations keep adding onto.
In terms of a good place to start with Joe Hill, the first thing one needs to make clear is that we’re dealing with a pseudonym, a Nat Wilk Clerk, as I believe Lewis called it; an author who doesn’t exist. Instead, his actual, full name, is Joseph Hilstrom King, as in, son of Stephen. His dad is the author of books like “The Stand” and “The Dark Tower”. For what it’s worth, “King Sorrow” does contain the lines “The Man in Black fled across the white desert and Arthur Oakes followed”. Also, there’s a posthumous mention of the character Greg Stillson, from “The Dead Zone”. Which effectively places Hill’s story in the same secondary world created by his father years ago. The willingness of his own son to make such a creative choice means that there is the possibility the imaginative realms created by Stephen King may not automatically come to an end with the actual Death of the Author. Instead, it could all very well be taken up and continued by his son under the Hill pseudonym. If there’s a question of incentive or motivation to read Hill’s works, then I suppose that’s as good as any.
In terms of were to start, I’m of the impression that the correct answer will have to vary according to the tastes of the reader. He’s just as capable as his father at delivering the chills and frights, while also being able to maintain that curious yet genuine level of literate, artistic finesse that’s possible even in a genre like Horror in the hands of someone who knows what they’re up to. For someone whose main interests run to the Mythopoeic, however, works like “King Sorrow” might be a good place to start. If it’s a question of a good introduction, meanwhile, then I don’t think there’s any need for a guest post when I’ve already written a review of a short story by the author. It’s called “Faun”, and it’s written very much in a similar vein to the “Sorrow” novel. Indeed, Hill’s experiences with being read the “Narnia” series as a child seems to have become the over-arching influence for this brief narrative. According to Hill, he asked himself what would happen if a group of greedy, industrialist, big game hunter types (such as Weston and Devine, perhaps?) were the ones to discover Aslan’s realm, instead of wide-eyed children?
What occurs to me now in writing this outline is that it’s a bit unclear whether Hill has ever read the “Ransom Series”, because the plot of “Faun” could almost be taken as a riff on “Out of the Silent Planet”. The major difference is that this time the artist has seen fit to place the events of that novel within a hidden world which clearly is modeled after Narnia in many ways. The result is a mostly successful riff on old, Lewisian themes. All Hill has done is to throw in a bit of those old, arabesque Gothic qualities that you would expect to find in the writings of someone like Arthur Machen or Lord Dunsany. The challenge that King’s son presents for himself is how do you take the fantastical imagery and content of Lewis’s Medieval-Elizabethan tapestry, and present it in what might be termed a proper Gothic light? It’s a question that I don’t believe many “Narnia” fans have asked themselves (even if Lewis comes close to such explorations in his own fiction, with the Dying Earth setting of Charn, from “The Magician’s Nephew” as a standout example). Thus, there is this beguiling sense of novelty to be had from such a conceptual setup if you’re a fan of Literate Horror with a Fantasy overlay. The major difference between the way Lewis and Hill resolve their Trespasser Conflict is best described as being down to the demands of the genre.
With “Out of the Silent Planet”, I always get the sense that we’re watching Lewis in the act of pioneering the sort of Classic Sci-Fi ethics that later artists like Gene Roddenberry would go on to run with and make famous. With imaginary creatures like Hyoi and the Hross, Lewis has more or less set the groundwork for later, similar incarnations such as Mr. Spock and the Vulcans. What this means in terms of generic practice is that Lewis’s story of the violation of a Pure Space has to come with the open option of a peaceful yet humbling resolution attached to it. This is what we get in the denouement of “Planet”. However, it can also run towards the more cut and dried resolution where the only option left is for the trespasser to pay the traditional fairy story price, such as what eventually happens to Weston in “Perelandra”. The ending of Hill’s short story definitely goes with the latter approach, with perhaps a very clear hint of that old Brothers’ Grimm morality to it. It works more or less, and I would offer up just one minor edit to make it feel complete, yet in terms of a good place to start with the fiction of Joe Hill (King) from a Mythopoeic perspective, then I’d have to say that both “Faun” and “King Sorrow” are perhaps the best candidates. My Scriblerus Club review for “Faun” can be found here, by the way:
https://www.scriblerusinkspot.com/2020/04/joe-hills-faun-2019.html
On Joe Hill, I love his creative risk. I will start with the new horror book, I think–if I don’t start the Metaphysical Animal one! But jeepers, you have a full-on essay over there! Well done. I will read it.
Isn’t T.S. Eliot always “on to something,” even if he doesn’t work it out fully. I try to read that essay every year.
Prof. Dickieson,
As to my own way of writing reviews, it’s starting to seem as if I truly am something of a throwback. I was brought up in and during the closing years of the influential reach of literary periodicals like “The Sewanee Review”, or the “New York Review of Books”. That essayist style or approach toward critique seems to have been the shaping mold that my mind drew upon, for better or worse. That’s the second time someone has told me I’m writing essays, for the record. I can’t say this is what I intended, so there it is anyway, as Charles Williams might observe
.
As for T.S. Eliot, I’ll not overburden a full plate. I’ll just note that Prof. Lyndall Gordon has made a valuable discovery that advances our understanding of the “Waste Land” poet’s artistry. It comes in the form of over 1,000 letters sent to a Ms. Emily Hale. And what it reveals is that she was sort of his Muse for the longest time, during a great deal of his public career. Their relationship seems to have functioned in much the same way as Beatrice did for Dante. She was the woman he pined after from afar. At one point, Eliot even admitted to Hale that she was the Hyacinth Girl in the opening movement of his most famous poem. The net result of Gordon’s discovery is that it is able to definitively deconstruct the Poetics of Impersonality that Eliot always tried to maintain about his career by showing that the writer admitted to this being nothing more than a deliberately crafted false front. Something whose only purpose was to throw off the critics. Another thing the Hale correspondence does is to recontextualize the poet more firmly within a Romantic frame of literary reference.
That’s because the artistic qualities contained in Dante’s own life were already viewed as Romantic by the Lake Poets. The only issue isn’t one of difference, but rather of mere vocabulary. Even back in Dante’s time, such a situation would have been viewed as an exercise in Chivalry, with the word Romance being applied to the genre in which he wrote the “Comedy”. All that writers like Wordsworth and Coleridge did was to expand upon a single word in such a way as to make it congruent with what came before, while also being in the service of the next new ground for literary endeavors of their time. As a result, it becomes possible to examine Eliot’s poems in the same framework as that applied by Williams in “The English Poetic Mind” or through the guidelines laid out by the Rev. Malcolm Guite in his “Mariner” biography of Coleridge. With the hindsight of the Hale letters, Eliot’s skittishness about the Lake Poets begins to make a bit more sense. He seems to have known his writings always lived in, and perhaps even belongs to the looming shadow of the Romantic Movement. Just some interesting trivia worth passing along, is all.