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bookishlybeauty's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.0
josiahdegraaf's review against another edition
3.0
This is one of those books that if you haven't read all the works the author is analyzing, it's going to be rather hard or tedious to follow at points. Yet, at least from the parts analyzing books that I'd actually read, it really is quite a good book--and it's neat to see Lewis as the literary critic, not simply as the theologian or novelist. While this book may have been longer than what I, as a layman to the field of Medieval studies, would have preferred, I gleaned a lot from it, and folks who have read more Medieval allegories than I have would certainly take a lot more from the book.
Rating: 3.5 Stars (Good).
Rating: 3.5 Stars (Good).
earlapvaldez's review against another edition
5.0
In here lies the literary genius of C.S. Lewis, as this work gives us a glimpse of his expertise in medieval literature and philosophy. This could have been better had I read literary works outside Chaucer, like the Faerie Queene.
lukerik's review against another edition
“The reader who has followed – if any has followed – my first two chapters…”
And I’m done. The problem here is accessibility. If you want to understand every word on the page in those first two chapters you will need to understand something like seven languages as he often quotes without translating. Particularly egregious is his use of Latin as he often slips in phrases or even makes his points in that language. This probably wasn’t such a problem back in 1936 as most of his audience would have learnt Latin at school. What this book needs is an annotated edition with translations in footnotes. If someone were to produce such a thing, I’d buy it because what I could understand was very good. He has a way of taking you into the Medieval mindset and making you look at our own times in a different way. If that sounds attractive read The Discarded Image which performs the same trick in English.
skrivena_stranica's review against another edition
4.0
I need to return to this book one day and read it again with greater attention. Sadly, I don't have time for that now because there are other books that need to be read for my graduate thesis.
patrickwonders's review against another edition
Assumes I have read gobs of medieval fiction that I have not read. Really long sentences and paragraphs in “I’m smarter than you”-prose.
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