The Personal Heresy
A Controversy
C. S. Lewis
E. M. W. Tillyard
Introduction & Chapter I
What is the personal heresy and why do
both Lewis and Tillyard split time in the
book?
 What is poetry? The poet? (xiv)
 What is the importance of this argument?
 How would you rate Lewis’s courtesy
toward Tillyard in Chapter One?
 Wikipedia

Chapter I Outline, “The Personal
Heresy,” Lewis
Example 1: “young soldier poets”
 Example 2: His Majesty’s Stationery Office
(Sir Henry John Newbolt)
 Example 3: Tillyard’s Milton
 Example 4: Kingsmill’s Matthew Arnold
 Example 5: T. S. Eliot
 Example 6: H. W. Garrod’s Wordsworth
 CSL Counter-Example 1: Robert Herrick’s
“Upon Julia’s Clothes” on the question,
“What is it that I see?”

Chapter I Outline, “The Personal
Heresy,” Lewis
CSL Counter-Example 2: Walter De la Mare’s
“Very old are …”
 CSL Counter-Example 3: Wordsworth’s
Prelude
 CSL Counter-Example 4: Isa. 13:19-22 on the
question, “What is the nature of this
consciousness?” (12)
 CSL Counter-Example 5: Keats’ Hyperion on
the question, “What now remains of the
personal dogma?” (17)

Chapter I Questions
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How is the personality of the author twice removed from
the poetical experience (7)?
What is the topic of this poem by Walter De la Mare?
Comment: “It is, in fact, these things, not as they are, but as
they seem to be, which poetry represents to me, or so I shall
be told” (11).
In what sense does the reader come in contact with the
poet?
Does Lewis think that a poet is a person who sees things in a
special way? (20)
How important is context? (20)
What is the point Lewis makes in regard to the position of
the window? (23)
How are the materialist and the spiritual theories both fatal
to the personal heresy? (24ff.)
Chapter II Outline, “Rejoinder,”
Tillyard
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First Preliminary: “slightly shop-soiled”
Second Preliminary: no line drawn between
lyric and dramatic poetry (drama)
Main Argument: the meaning of “personal”
and “personality”
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Lewis includes trivial details in personality
For Lewis, not the poet’s normal personality
Tillyard means “some mental pattern”
Tillyard: personality functions in style
Example: T. S. Eliot’s The Rock
Chapter II Outline, “Rejoinder,”
Tillyard

Continued
◦ The passage from Isaiah shows the personality of
the translator, though not of the author
◦ The paradox: ipsissimus cum minime ipse
◦ Tillyard: Lewis assumes that what is true of
communication is also true of the experience
◦ A distinction: fluid (Shakespeare, Flaubert, Keats)
and rigid natures (Milton, Wordsworth)
◦ Art vs. Life—connected or disconnected?
◦ Don’t use biography as a shortcut (37), but it can
reveal “the mental pattern” (as with William
Morris and John Milton)
Chapter II Outline, “Rejoinder,”
Tillyard

Continued
◦ What is poetry about?
◦ Two Observations:
 First, Tillyard does not limit the value of poetry to
the contact with an important personality.
 Second, Lewis is “too rigidly concerned with things
and too little heedful of states of mind”
◦ We learn about the poet’s excited state of
mind in “Upon Julia’s Clothes.” He is excited,
satisfied, and captivated.
Chapter II Questions
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What is the tone of Tillyard’s essay? (27)
Who is the first to be a gentleman? Why?
What is implied by making the statement on page
38, line 2, “It may be fairer …:”
What is “personality” according to Tillyard and
Lewis?
Are there examples in the life of Lewis where
biographical study could have prevented a critic
from making a mistake? (37)
Is poetry the result of “the superior penetration
of poetic genius”? (38) So what?
Chapter II Questions
Does Tillyard make any unproven assumptions?
Which of the two writers would suggest that the
poet’s Art is separated from his Life, and which
would suggest that they are connected?
 What interesting historical note does Tillyard
suggest for the translator of Isaiah? (33)
 The Gunpowder Plot: 1605, Guy Fawkes’ failed
attempt to blow up Parliament and assassinate
King James I of England and King James VI of
Scotland (now celebrated on Guy Fawkes Night,
November 5)
 What is poetry about?
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Chapter III Vocabulary
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Hyperuranian (44): a place where only gods can
go, non-material
Petitio (46): short for petitio principii (“assuming
the initial point”), begging the question, e.g., “God
exists.” “How do you know?” “Because the Bible
says so.” “Why should I believe the Bible?”
“Because the Bible was written by God.”
The law of Occam’s razor (47): make as few
assumptions as possible
“willing suspension of disbelief” (51): from
Coleridge, suspending judgment that what we are
reading could not have happened
Common room (56): shared lounge (British term)
Chapter III Outline, “Open Letter,”
Lewis
Hungry for “rational opposition”
Graciousness in the opening paragraph
Recantation: (1) positions on Tillyard and
Eliot; (2) that it is a new heresy; (3) Lewis’s
interpretation of the Isaiah passage
 Four Main Heads
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◦ A distinction in the definition of personality
◦ The paradox of poetic creation
◦ Confusing the means of communication with that
which is communicated
◦ Preference of things to people
Things He Skips
Lewis will not pursue Tillyard’s distinction
between fluid and rigid personalities (42)
 Lewis will not develop his presuppositions
about the material world and the spiritual
world (43)
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First Main Head
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A distinction in the definition of
personality (44-45)
◦ Personality needs to stay in its right place
◦ Personality includes little things, trivial things
◦ Personality includes warmth, humanity,
intimacy, the real rough and tumble of life

But are these things valuable because they
are certain patterns or because of the
things seen through them?
Second Main Head
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The paradox of poetic creation (46-48)
◦ Great art is unique
◦ So is every moment of time
◦ This begs the question (Great art is unique.
Because it’s unique, therefore it’s great.)
◦ Don’t confuse individuality with personality
Third Main Head

Confusing the means of communication with
that which is communicated (49)
◦ Lewis says that he based “that which is
communicated” on a separate argument from
“the means of communication,” and he blames
himself for not making that clear.
Fourth Main Head
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Preference of things to people (49-56)
◦ The claim is false, but Lewis blames himself
again.
◦ “To think of literature is to think first and
foremost” of people (49).
◦ Lewis focused on silk to make the argument
simple. He doesn’t think it’s this simple.
◦ Lewis grants that Herrick is interested in Julia,
not just silk. But also not his own reactions to
Julia in silk.
Fourth Main Head (continued)

Preference of things to people (49-56)
◦ Not about art in general, but about
imaginative literature
◦ Private letters and some essays are about the
writer’s personality
◦ The poet’s personality intrudes into an
imagined world.
◦ We don’t owe a poet an aesthetic response,
but we do owe it to his poetry.
◦ Lewis likes Dryden’s poetry, but not Dryden.
Fourth Main Head (continued)

Three Dilemmas, or, Three Ways of
Offending against Personality (part of the
preference of things to people)
◦ Logic vs. imagination: Personality forces us out
of the world of poetry and into the world of
logic and ethics.
◦ It is uncivil to think about the person instead
of what he says.
◦ Poetolatry: the idolatry of poetry (loving
poets rather than appreciating their poetry)
Chapter III Questions
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How would you characterize Lewis’s
opening and closing paragraphs?
What is “the proper pleasure of personality”
(52, top)? So what?
What is poetolatry? Why is it an issue? How
does it surface?
How many times does Lewis use the word
“Sir,” and what does this mean?
What startling prediction did Matthew
Arnold make about poetry?
Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder?
Chapter III Questions
Is personality a mental pattern or various details?
What is personality according to Lewis?
What is absurd about the triad Christ,
Shakespeare, and Keats?
 What is Lewis echoing on p. 56 when he writes
about “an emotion whose true object is our
neighbor”?
 Is there a difference between something that is an
expression of personality and something that
expresses personality?
 Is Lewis or Tillyard more likely to be described as
an elitist? So what?
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Chapter IV Vocabulary
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enisle = “to make an island of,” “to
isolate” (67)
Chapter IV Outline, No Title,
Tillyard

I. Clarifications: “personal” is not equivalent to the
“concrete”; Tillyard did not think Lewis oblivious to
Julia
◦ But Tillyard thinks the poet’s reaction still possibly “the
poet’s main concern” (60).
◦ Tillyard illustrates this with “The Mower to the Glowworms”

II. Apologies: (1) Tillyard’s accusation about seeing only
half of a paradox was merely accusing Lewis of not
agreeing with him (the poet is most himself when
surrendering self) (61, bottom); (2) Tillyard withdraws
the charge that Lewis confused communication with
the thing communicated; (3) Tillyard pleads guilty of
vagueness over the uniqueness of the Delphic
Charioteer.
Chapter IV Outline, No Title,
Tillyard

III. Different Senses of
Uniqueness
◦ Something not likely to
recur (63)
◦ A sense of unity and
individuality (63)
◦ A sense of kinship and
sharing (64)
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IV. The Distinction
between Life and Art
A personal impression:
Romanesque churches
in Auvergne, France
Auvergne = 16; Paris = 6
Chapter IV Outline, No Title,
Tillyard
This personal impression is an example of sharing,
much like one sees things differently, in
heightened apprehension, when one views a
sunset in company vs. in solitaire.
 V. The Value of Personality in Literature

◦ First, the flow of sympathy between author and
reader (67), as in Wordsworth, “a superior person”
◦ Footnote on two classes of trivial details, the essential
stammer (CSL and EMWT agree on this) and the
unessential stammer
◦ Second, mental pattern in both life and art, governed
by predispositions that affect both life and art, as in
Keats’ Hyperion
Chapter IV Outline, No Title,
Tillyard
VI. More on Life and Art
 The dead poet can do something for us
(73f.); he or she can set an example, which
brings comfort and courage.
 The dead poet is also “one who has
inhabited heavens and hells unbearable by
the ordinary man” (Examples: Shakespeare,
Baudelaire, Marvell, & Herrick)
 In some poets, this counts for little
(Tennyson, 77).

Chapter IV Outline, No Title,
Tillyard
Summary: The two functions of
personality in literature are (1) a kind of
sharing and (2) setting an example.
 Can our differences be “resolved into no
more than a matter of terminology”? (78)
 A question from Tillyard to Lewis: What
does the author’s personality express, i.e.
what is literature?
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Chapter IV Questions
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What evidence do you find of Tillyard’s graciousness?
Did Tillyard truly share something with the man who
designed that Romanesque church? What evidence
can you give for your answer?
Is the poet “a cut above” or one of the common
people? (see “a superior person,” 68, top)
What does Tillyard say personality is good for in
literature? What do you think Lewis will say to this?
What difference does this issue make?
Is it impossible for an agricultural laborer saved from
will-o’-the-wisps by glow-worms to help us
appreciate rural life (61, middle)?
Chapter IV Questions
Might the difference between Tillyard and
Lewis simply be a preference for feelings by
Tillyard and objective things by Lewis?
 What is meant by “the formidable battery of
Mr. Lewis’s dialectic” (62, top)? Why do you
think Tillyard says this and in this way?
 What is the point of talking about the
distinction between life and art (65,
bottom)?
 What do you think Lewis will say about
Tillyard seeing value in the idea of sharing an
experience with the poet? (67f.)
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Chapter V Vocabulary
qua = insofar as
 “making shift” = to manage by expedience
(82)
 “the apple of discord” = Chapter I, which
was written in 1933 and published in a
1934 issue of Essays and Studies (82)
 jejune = dull
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Chapter V Outline, No Title, Lewis
I. Three Senses of Unique (79)
 II. Two Agreements: The Poet’s Example and
Sharing
 III. Two Kinds of Poetry
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◦ Common experiences that all people have.
◦ A new and nameless sensation, or experiences that
enrich one.
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IV. Lewis’s Theory of Poetry: a trained habit (art
or skill) of using certain instruments (the extralogical features of language, 85, 89) to certain
ends (the concrete reality of experiences, 89) and
doing it well (90): definition and content of poetry
Chapter V Outline, No Title, Lewis
V. Lewis on Naturalism (interspersed with
IV)
 V.I Two Types of Language (89)
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◦ Scientific or philosophical language
◦ Poetic language
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VII. The Content of Poetry (92)
◦ Not about proving anything
◦ Not about a practical purpose
◦ Otherwise, about anything and everything
Chapter V Outline, No Title, Lewis
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VIII. The Great Poet (94): Is he or she . . .
◦ A great man who is also a poet, or
◦ A man highly skilled in poetry (CSL here?)
IX. The Value of Poetry?
 X. Qualifications of the Right Judges: none
(96)
 XI. What Poetry Requires to be
Understood by the Average Reader
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◦ Pleasure
◦ Profit
Chapter V Questions
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What is Lewis referring to, which we have
read earlier, when he writes of “some want
within” (79, bottom)?
What do Lewis and Tillyard think of
“common things and common men” (80), at
least in the opinion of Lewis? Why?
Comment: “trailing clouds of glory” (80)
How does Lewis define poetry? A poem?
Is poetry the creation of something new or
the expression of common experience?
Chapter V Questions
Of the two definitions offered, what is
Lewis’ preferred definition of a great
poet? So what?
 Whom does Lewis prefer, Mr A or Mr. B
(97)? Why? Whom do you prefer?
 Is reading poetry like the sharing of two
lovers or the sharing of two friends? Why?
So what?
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Chapter V Questions
What is Lewis seeing in the second type of
poetry that is not part of the essence of
poetry, but illustrates much of Lewis’ writing
(85)?
 What does Lewis think of the courage of
some poets (88)?
 What evidence is there in this work that
Lewis had a Christian sub-text?
 Do we have a tendency to inflate the
importance of what we do?
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Chapter V Questions
On page 87, Lewis writes, “What man, after
forty years in the world, has not experienced
enough (if that were all that was needed) to
be raw material for all the tragedies of
Shakespeare?”
 What do terms such as “insincere,”
“spurious,” “bogus,” and “sham” suggest
about a reviewer (98)?
 How can one read this chapter and commit
the personal heresy?
 How can one read this chapter and not
commit the personal heresy?
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Chapter VI Vocabulary
kestrel = falcon
 chimerical = imaginary
 Carl Jung = author of the collective
unconscious, where archetypes resided
(116)
 Archetypes = a universally recognized
symbol, pattern, or example
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Chapter VI Outline, No Title, Tillyard
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I. Two Kinds of Sharing (sharing with authors vs.
sharing with nature)
II. The Exemplary Function (Agreement)
III. Two Kinds of Poetry (Agreement)
IV. Poetolatry (Agreement, but …)
V. Definition of Poetry (Agreement, but…)
VI. What Poetry is About (108ff.)
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Rendering personality (113f.)
General states of mind (114)
Feelings (and history) (114)
Something new (115)
Something old (115)
VII. An Agreement: Plea for the Common Reader
Chapter VI Questions
Does Tillyard say anything to suggest that
poets are “a class apart”?
 Is there any “harm in paying respect to those
qualities they possess in an eminent degree”?
(107)
 How are both Tillyard and Lewis correct in
stating that the poet is separate (Tillyard) or
not separate (Lewis) from the common
person? (104)
 How does the exchange between Lewis and
Tillyard compare to the current political
discourse in the United States?
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Chapter VI Questions
How does Tillyard quote Somerset
Maugham in his favor?
 What percentage (Tillyard declines to
hazard a guess) of a piece of poetry do
think that Tillyard would say has to do
with personality? (see last paragraph on p.
113 continuing onto p. 114)
 So whose case on personality in poetry is
stronger and why? So what?

The End