Splendour in the Dark: C.S. Lewis’s Dymer in His Life and Work

Root (The Quotable C.S. Lewis), professor of evangelism at Wheaton College in Illinois, argues in this exacting analysis that C.S. Lewis’s 1925 poem Dymer showcases the author’s rhetorical gifts and concern with the power of myth that flowered in his later work. Dymer describes the experiences of a young man who leaves a totalitarian city and wanders in the wilderness, encountering sensual and spiritual pleasures but also torment, culminating in his death in a battle with his own monstrous offspring. Root spends the first half of the book on an annotated text of Dymer, highlighting connections between imagery in the poem and in Lewis’s fiction—but many entries are simple dictionary definitions of archaic terminology. The rest consists of three of Root’s lectures on Dymer analyzing the poem as “an important literary artifact” and responses to each by his fellow faculty members. English professor Jeffrey C. Davis humorously gives thanks for the chilly critical reception the poem received, which cleared the way for Lewis’s later work in Christian apologetics; actor Mark Lewis notes how the actions in Dymer seem “demonstrated rather than lived through”; and poet Miho Nonaka sympathizes with Lewis’s drive to excel in a genre—epic poetry—already out of vogue in his youth. Lewis completists will enjoy this focused, stimulating analysis. (Nov.)