ESC: English Studies in Canada

Certain favourites receive particular and even constant attention. Scott, for example, often attests to the abilities of George Meredith, and Tennyson’s death in 1892 causes a variety of reflections. One very interesting presenta­ tion in this vein is Wilfred Campbell’s observation on “ the ten best American books.” As well as some surprising inclusions, such as Motley’s Dutch Re­ public as number five, there are equally fascinating exclusions. Anyone with some knowledge of American literary history should not be surprised at the total absence of Herman Melville but today it is still somewhat jarring, as is the neglect of Huckleberry Finn, although that might be explained by the fact that it had been published only some nine years before. Twain arrives in Campbell’s list only well after the first ten, following Artemus Ward on a list of humourists. The reference to Motley suggests the one major gap in the book. Davies gives a clear, concise and essentially accurate introduction, and there is a nicely detailed index but there are no notes. These are especially wanting in the various references to American writers who must have been very major to their contemporaries but who are almost totally forgotten today. A short comment would have been a great assistance to me in understanding the many references to Thomas B. Aldrich, whose poetry has, I am afraid, escaped my notice. The average reader probably will not read this book from cover to cover. I suspect it will provide more pleasure if dipped into at intervals, particularly through the aid of the index. For students of the three poets, however, or even of Canadian cultural history in general, it should become an essential and well-thumbed tool. All of us should be very grateful to Davies and to the University of Toronto Press for providing it. terry goldie / Memorial University Lionel Adey, C. S. Lewis’s “ Great War” with Owen Barfield (Victoria: The University of Victoria English Literary Studies Monograph Series, No. 14, 1978). 136. $3.75 Owen Barfield graduated from Oxford in 1921 with a first in English. He then began to read for a B.Litt. thesis on poetic diction. His friend C. S. Lewis graduated from Oxford in 1922 with a double first in Literae Humaniores (“Greats” ), then stayed on to take a first in English in 1923. The “Great War” between them, so named, Lionel Adey tells us, by Lewis after the war of 1914-1918 in which both had served, was a debate about beliefs, conducted in person, by letters, and through papers which the two friends 243 exchanged. The debate continued until about 1932, by which time Lewis had joined the Anglican church and begun the writing that was to make him famous. Barfield had published History in English Words in 1926 and Poetic Diction in 1928, but was obliged by the depression to curtail his scholarly career and postpone his study of Coleridge while he practised law. “ What is astonishing about the friendly ‘Great War’ between Lewis and Barfield,” Adey says, “is not that it sputtered out but that it lasted so long and nurtured so many ideas later developed in published works.” From the letters and other manuscripts that have survived, and with some help from Barfield, Adey astutely surveys the “War.” At least at the beginning of the debate, Lewis was the more skeptical and logical of the two. Schooled in the thought of the ancients and of the En­ lightenment, he relied on reason, and rejected both intuition and imagination as bases for belief. He believed, Adey says, that man’s mind “perceived rather than created its environment.” Barfield was closer to the Romantics, especially to Coleridge, than to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, and he knew poetry better than logic. When Barfield espoused Anthroposophy and admired the writings of its founder, Rudolf Steiner, Lewis began his “ Great War” to show Barfield the errors in his thinking. Yet, Steiner’s views strengthened Barfield’s convictions that imagination could discover truth and that metaphor and poetry could convey it. Steiner’s account of the evolution of consciousness in man was a source of Barfield’s belief that, as Adey expresses it, “man...