“A noise of great good coming”: C. S. Lewis’s Dymer as a Spiritual Autobiography

Authors

Norbert Feinendegen

Abstract

C. S. Lewis is no doubt one of the most recognized Christian prose writers of the twentieth century. The same, however, cannot be said about his pre-Christian attempts to make a name for himself as a poet. His two volumes of poetry, Spirits in Bondage (1919) and Dymer (1926), received few positive reviews and found even fewer readers at the time of publication, and sadly they didn’t receive much attention after Lewis became famous as a Christian apologist and novelist.

I am going to argue that Dymer is a symbolic narrative in which every event on the level of the story stands for spiritual issues in the hero’s soul. And I propose to show that the autobiographical element in Dymer is considerably larger than it has been perceived until now. Therefore, a thorough knowledge of the early stages of Lewis’s spiritual journey will give us a much better understanding of what he was trying to say.

Recommended Citation

Feinendegen, Norbert (2023) "“A noise of great good coming”: C. S. Lewis’s Dymer as a Spiritual Autobiography," Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal: Vol. 17 : Iss. 1 , Article 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/1940-5537.1411
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/cslewisjournal/vol17/iss1/2