“A Critic Who Makes No Claim”: Disrupting Lewis’s (In)Expert Rhetorical Flourishes

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Published: Jun 30, 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47743/lincu-2024-1-0355
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C.S. Lewis humility topos Hamlet

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Sarah Waters
University of Buckingham, U.K.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9681-3361

Abstract

This article shows us how C. S. Lewis offers an alternative way of framing expertise as he speaks and writes about his period(s) and text(s). This essay establishes that Lewis’s humility is, to some degree, a deliberately cultivated and rhetorically shrewd one. The self-characterization of childlike inexperience and humility is a traditional medieval rhetorical move of which Lewis is a master. Moreover, the irony of this humility has washed over commentators who believe Lewis’s claim to be no true Shakespearean scholar and who have all too readily sought to rescue Lewis from his reticence. This paper sets the record straight by resituating Lewis as an academic exploring medieval and renaissance texts from the inside out. It takes Lewis’s reticent remark at the beginning of his Shakespeare Lecture to the British Academy (1942) as a case in point.

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Waters, S. “‘A Critic Who Makes No Claim’: Disrupting Lewis’s (In)Expert Rhetorical Flourishes”. Linguaculture, vol. 15, no. 1, June 2024, pp. 37-56, doi:10.47743/lincu-2024-1-0355.
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Vol. 15 No. 1 (2024): C. S. Lewis – The Re-enchanted Academic
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Articles
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Author Biography

Sarah Waters, University of Buckingham, U.K.

Dr Sarah WATERS is a Lecturer in English Literature and an Honorary Junior Research Fellow at the University of Buckingham. With a background in medical humanities, Shakespearean drama, and Inklings studies, she most frequently can be found working on projects connected to Lewis and Shakespeare. She was the first recipient of the Shuster Grant at the Wade Center, and regularly speaks at conferences on the Inklings and Shakespeare (sometimes together, sometimes separately). She is currently working on a couple of book length studies and a handful of articles. Recent publications include, “Disrupted dialogues: exploring misgendered diagnoses and experiences of melancholia and depression through the lens of Pericles and contemporary psychiatric practice”, “C. S. Lewis’ Science Fiction and Shakespeare: A Romance Made in the Heavens”, “Lewis, Lear, and The Four Loves”, an article in the Shakespeare and Cultural Apologetics special issue of An Unexpected Journal which she co-edited with Dr. Joe Ricke.

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