Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Great War
Chapter 2: The Poets 1914—1918
Chapter 3: Jack and Warren Lewis during the Great War
Chapter 4: C.S. Lewis and the 1st Battalion, Somerset Light
Infantry
Chapter 5: Jack and Spirits in Bondage
Chapter 6: Robert von Ranke Graves (1895-1985): A Brief
Biography
Chapter 7: Siegfried Loraine Sassoon (1886-1967): A Brief
Biography
Chapter 8: Comparisons and Conclusions
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
About the Author
John Bremer has published several articles on and a brief biography of C.S. Lewis. He has led a double career, first, researching and writing on scholarly texts, especially on the Platonic dialogues, and, second, applying what he has learned to problems of society and public education, In the former aspect, he discovered the arithmetical/harmonical structure of the Platonic dialogues (1960-1984), and, in the latter, founded the Parkway Program (the original school-without-walls) in Philadelphia (1968) and Cambridge College in 1971.
This important book is a much-needed analysis of C.S. Lewis’s
youth, experiences in the Great War, and early poetry. It is
clear-sighted and vigorously written, and a welcome corrective to
assumptions that have crept into some writing about this period in
Lewis’s life. Bremer’s premise that Lewis was a poet influenced by
war but not a “war-poet” is a sound one, well supported by
comparisons to Graves and Sassoon. While not affording
Spirits in Bondage more importance than its proper due as a young
man’s ambitious first attempt at a poetry cycle, Bremer’s thorough
discussion of each poem grants us great insight into the
pre-conversion Lewis’s character, so different from the mature
fantasist and Christian apologist with whom so many readers are
familiar.
*Janet Brennan Croft, Associate Professor, University of
Oklahoma*
This is a fresh reading of C. S. Lewis’s service in WWI as well as
a helpful discussion of the poetry Lewis wrote during this
time.
*Don W. King, professor of English, Montreat College*
This book's title is an accurate guide to its contents, but Brenner
also includes brief biographies of Robert Graves and Siegfried
Sassoon, and an account of Lewis's adulterous affair. Bremer's
account of the poetry Lewis wrote during this dark period in
English history is excellent. Besides his commentary on the poetry,
the author provides interesting insights into the English Public
School system and why its "necessarily homosexual" atmosphere seems
to have been such an important factor in the lives of its students.
The discussion of Lewis's pre-conversion years, his atheism, and
his first volume of poetry, Spirits in Bondage (1919), is
excellent. (Spirits in Bondage is not war poetry and now mostly
forgotten.) The author's intent is to show that Lewis was "a good
man" despite contrary evidence. Lewis's atheism may have been
connected to the problem of evil in the world. His literary
ambition never left him, but he did become a popular apologist for
Christianity. Good bibliography. Well written and well researched.
Summing Up: Recommended.
*CHOICE*
Bremer’s book overall is a valuable study of Lewis in the Great
War, as a beginning poet, and as a troubled soul who had much
growing to do.
*Mythlore*
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