Record Number: 32433
Reading Experience:
Evidence:
'Italian quite comes up to K's promises about its easiness and on Sunday I read the first 200 lines of Dante with much success. By the end of term I should be able to read it as easily as French.'
Century:1900-1945
Date:Between 4 Feb 1917 and 19 Mar 1917
Country:England
Timen/a
Place:Great Bookham
Surrey
'Gastons'
(Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
(Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Reader / Listener / Reading Group:
Reader: Age:Adult (18-100+)
Gender:Male
Date of Birth:29 Nov 1898
Socio-Economic Group:Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation:Student
Religion:Church of England
Country of Origin:Northern Ireland
Country of Experience:England
Listeners present if any:e.g family, servants, friends
This was part of Lewis's studies, so I think Mr Kirkpatrick was with him and guiding his reading.
Additional Comments:
n/a
Text Being Read:
Author: Title:Divine Comedy
Genre:Other religious, History, Poetry, Autobiog / Diary, Politics, Philosophy, Epic poem written in the Italian vernacular, popular culture, classical tradition
Form of Text:Print: Book
Publication DetailsIn the original Italian
Provenanceunknown
Source Information:
Record ID:32433
Source:C. S. Lewis
Editor:Walter Hooper
Title:C. S. Lewis Collected Letters
Place of Publication:London
Date of Publication:2000
Vol:1
Page:275
Additional Comments:
From a letter to his father, 8 February 1917. 'K' is his tutor, William Kirkpatrick. Hooper explains in a note (p.264): 'It was further decided, as Jack mentioned in the letter to his father of 8 February, that if all his ideas about Oxford "fell through", he would try for the Foreign Office. For this reason Mr Kirkpatrick planned for him to learn Italian, German and Spanish.'
Citation:
C. S. Lewis, Walter Hooper (ed.), C. S. Lewis Collected Letters, (London, 2000), 1, p. 275, http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading/UK/record_details.php?id=32433, accessed: 09 November 2024
Additional Comments:
The date range begins precisely with the 4th February, which was a Sunday in 1917. It ends with Lewis's final day in Great Bookham. The book may have belonged to either of them, or it may have been borrowed from a library. I have marked the provenance 'unknown', but I think ownership the more likely option. I would expect an edition with critical apparatus - but not with an English translation, because of a comment Lewis makes later to Arthur Greeves: '... I am reading Dante's "Purgatorio" in the Temple Classics edition with a crib on the opposite page. So 'ave the mighty fallen.' (Letter to Greeves, 6? October 1918, v.1, p.403)