First published more than thirty years ago, the Arthurian poems included in these two collections have enjoyed critical acclaim-but not wide popularity. "Like the Blake of the Prophetic Books,"W. H. Auden wrote, "Charles Williams has his own mythology which a reader must master." To the thoughtful and discerning reader, however, the effort required is eminently worthwhile. C. S. Lewis has suggested that Williams might be the greatest poet of his time, and Auden added that "the more I read Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars, the more rewarding I find them." Here, in this one unusual volume, the lyric cycle represented by Taliessin and Summer Stars is brought together with two other works, both indispensable to an understanding of the poems. In The Figure of Arthur, his prose study of the Arthurian legend, Williams provides valuable background information on the ancient legends of King Arthur and the Holy Grail. Lewis' commentary Williams and the Arthuriad, suggests an order for reading the poems that establishes a narrative continuity, and draws on notes from Williams himself to help clarify the meaning of the cycle. The Arthurian poems of Charles Williams-complex, sometimes obscure, always challenging-are now available to the wider audience they have so long deserved.
Authors
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. Clive Staples Lewis was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954. He was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Mere Christianity, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classics The Chronicles of Narnia. To date, the Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and been transformed into three major motion pictures. Lewis was married to poet Joy Davidman. W.H. Lewis was his elder brother]
Charles Walter Stansby Williams is probably best known, to those who have heard of him, as a leading member (albeit for a short time) of the Oxford literary group, the "Inklings", whose chief figures were C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien. He was, however, a figure of enormous interest in his own right: a prolific author of plays, fantasy novels (strikingly different in kind from those of his friends), poetry, theology, biography and criticism. — the Charles Williams Society website
