Cover not available
Article published In:
English Text Construction
Vol. 16:1 (2023) ► pp.82–108

Dating “Sweet Desire”

C. S. Lewis’s education in alliterative poetics

ORCID logo | University of Arizona

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are two key figures in the Modern Alliterative Revival, and each sought to revive Old English poetics with close to absolute metrical fidelity. While scholarship on Tolkien’s alliterative verse has seen an uptick in recent years, though, Lewis remains the odd poet out. Nominally, this article attempts to assign a composition date for Lewis’s poem “Sweet Desire.” My dating to early 1930 associates this text with Lewis’s famous conversion to theism. More broadly, this article tracks one revivalist’s painstaking adaptation of the alliterative meter into Modern English, outlining the technical challenges faced by Lewis and which other contemporary revivalists must overcome as well.

Keywords: alliterative meter, C. S. Lewis, Modern Alliterative Revival, J. R. R. Tolkien, poetics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The reluctant (metrical) convert: Lewis through January 1927
  • 3.An overlooked landmark: “The Alliterative Metre” (May 1935)
  • 4.Lewis’s three dated alliterative poems: A discussion
    • A.“The Planets” (May 1935)
    • B.“Artless and Ignorant is Andvāri” (June 26, 192[9?])
    • C. The Nameless Isle (August 1930)
  • 5.Dating “Sweet Desire”
    • A.The broader date: January 1927–August 1930
    • B.The narrower date: Early 1930
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.22017.wis
References (31)
Christopher, Joe R.
2012 The journeys to and from Purgatory Island: A Dantean allusion at the end of C. S. Lewis’s “The Nameless Isle.” In Salwa Khoddam & Mark R. Hall (eds.), C. S. Lewis and the Inklings: Discovering hidden truth, 197–212. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Cilli, Oronzo
2019 Tolkien’s library: A checklist. Edinburgh: Luna Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, Raymond
2014 Tolkien. London: Robert Hale.Google Scholar
Glyer, Diana Pavlac
2007 The company they keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as writers in community. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.Google Scholar
Goering, Nelson
2015  The Fall of Arthur and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: A metrical review of three modern English alliterative poems. Journal of Inklings Studies 5(2). 3–56. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hodgens, Richard
1976 Notes on Narrative Poems. CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society 7(6). 1–14.Google Scholar
Hooper, Walter
1964 Preface. Poems (C. S. Lewis, author; Walter Hooper, ed.), v–ix. London: Geoffey Bles.Google Scholar
Jones, Math
11 Nov 2021 Re: Modern Alliterative Poetry. E-mail. Received by Dennis Wilson Wise.Google Scholar
Kawano, Roland
2004 C. S. Lewis: Always a Poet. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
King, Don W.
2001 C. S. Lewis, Poet: The Legacy of his Poetic Impulse. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.Google Scholar
Lazo, Andrew
2012 Correcting the chronology: Some implications of ‘Early Prose Joy.’ VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center 1031. 51–62.Google Scholar
Lewis, C. S.
1939 Rehabilitations and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
1969 The Alliterative Metre. Selected Literary Essays (Walter Hooper, ed.), 15–26. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
1991 All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922–1927 (Walter Hooper, Ed). San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
2004 The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis: Volume 1: Family Letters 1905–1931 (Walter Hooper, ed.). San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco.Google Scholar
2015 The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis: A Critical Edition (Don W. King, ed.). Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.Google Scholar
2017 Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. San Francisco, CA: HarperOne. (Original work published 1955)Google Scholar
McGrath, Alistair
2013 C. S. Lewis: A Life. London: Hodder & Stoughton.Google Scholar
Musacchio, George
2015 C. S. Lewis’s unpublished letter in Old English. VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center 321. 19–28.Google Scholar
Niles, John D.
1978 The old alliterative verse form as a medium for poetry. Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 11(4). 19–33.Google Scholar
Phelpstead, Carl
2004 Auden and the Inklings: An alliterative revival. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 103(4). 433–457.Google Scholar
Scragg, D. G.
1981 Introduction. The Battle of Maldon (D. G. Scragg, ed.), 1–56. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Shippey, Tom
2010 Review of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún , by J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. Tolkien Studies 71. 291–324. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2013 Tolkien’s development as a writer of alliterative poetry in Modern English. In Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner (eds.), Tolkien’s Poetry, 11–28. Zurich: Walking Tree.Google Scholar
Starr, Charlie W.
2016 ‘Villainous Handwriting’: A chronological study of C. S. Lewis’s script. VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center 331. 73–94.Google Scholar
Sudell, T. S.
2016 The alliterative verse of The Fall of Arthur . Tolkien Studies 131. 71–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Terasawa, Jun
2011 Old English Metre: An Introduction. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tolkien, J. R. R.
1983 On translating Beowulf . The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (J. R. R. Tolkien, author; Christopher Tolkien, ed.), 49–71. London: HarperCollins Publishers.Google Scholar
29 May 1930 The Oxford English School. The Oxford Magazine 48(21). 778–82.Google Scholar
Weiskott, Eric
2016 English alliterative verse: Poetic tradition and literary tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wise, Dennis Wilson
ed. 2024 Speculative poetry and the Modern Alliterative Revival: A critical anthology Madison, NJ Fairleigh Dickinson University Press