What is it about?
The Inklings are two key figures in the Modern Alliterative Revival, and, nominally, this article assigns a date of composition for C. S. Lewis’s poem “Sweet Desire.” My dating to early 1930, significantly, associates this text with Lewis’s famous conversion to theism. More broadly, this article also tracks one revivalist’s painstaking adaptation of the alliterative meter into Modern English, and I outline the technical challenges faced by Lewis and which other contemporary revivalists must overcome as well.
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Why is it important?
(1) This article reveals the first religious poem Lewis ever wrote -- "Sweet Desire" (2) This article track Lewis's metrical learning curve in how to compose Old English-style poetry
Perspectives
This article is part of a larger series I've done concerning the Modern Alliterative Revival, which was formally announced through my book, SPECULATIVE POETRY AND THE MODERN ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL: A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY
Dennis Wise
University of Arizona
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This page is a summary of: Dating “Sweet Desire”, English Text Construction, November 2023, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/etc.22017.wis.
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