{"title":"Carved in Granite: C.S. Lewis’s Revivalism in The Nameless Isle","authors":"Dennis Wilson Wise","doi":"10.3366/ink.2023.0195","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The alliterative poetics used by C.S. Lewis have often proved a critical challenge for scholars without the right kind of medievalist training. In Lewis’s most ambitious contribution to the Modern Alliterative Revival, The Nameless Isle, I argue that he has a strong interest in maintaining fidelity to the Old English alliterative metre, particularly in regards to Sievers types and hypermetric verses, yet he partakes of several adaptations and concessions to Modern English that makes his narrative romance, in some ways, a more successful model than Tolkien’s contemporary ‘arch-purist’ text, The Fall of Arthur. By and large, while questions about a poet’s faithfulness to a historical alliterative tradition are important, deviations from strict fidelity can be even more important yet – they reveal the specific metrical challenges faced by poets in trying to resurrect the alliterative metre. Only by analysing the metrical data behind a poem like The Nameless Isle can we understand what a revivalist may be specifically trying to accomplish with their revivalism.","PeriodicalId":37069,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Inklings Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Inklings Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ink.2023.0195","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Arts and Humanities","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The alliterative poetics used by C.S. Lewis have often proved a critical challenge for scholars without the right kind of medievalist training. In Lewis’s most ambitious contribution to the Modern Alliterative Revival, The Nameless Isle, I argue that he has a strong interest in maintaining fidelity to the Old English alliterative metre, particularly in regards to Sievers types and hypermetric verses, yet he partakes of several adaptations and concessions to Modern English that makes his narrative romance, in some ways, a more successful model than Tolkien’s contemporary ‘arch-purist’ text, The Fall of Arthur. By and large, while questions about a poet’s faithfulness to a historical alliterative tradition are important, deviations from strict fidelity can be even more important yet – they reveal the specific metrical challenges faced by poets in trying to resurrect the alliterative metre. Only by analysing the metrical data behind a poem like The Nameless Isle can we understand what a revivalist may be specifically trying to accomplish with their revivalism.
事实证明,C.S. Lewis 所使用的拟声诗学对于没有受过适当中世纪训练的学者来说是一个严峻的挑战。在刘易斯对现代押韵诗复兴的最雄心勃勃的贡献《无名岛》中,我认为他对忠实于古英语押韵格律有着浓厚的兴趣,尤其是在西弗斯类型和超格律诗方面,但他对现代英语做出了一些改编和让步,这使得他的浪漫叙事在某些方面比托尔金的当代 "古嘌呤主义 "文本《亚瑟的没落》更成功。总的来说,诗人是否忠实于历史上的押韵传统固然重要,但偏离严格的忠实性可能更为重要--它们揭示了诗人在试图复活押韵格律时所面临的特定格律挑战。只有分析像《无名岛》这样的诗歌背后的韵律数据,我们才能理解复兴者复兴的具体目的。