‘A proper synthesis of literary and linguistic study’: C. S. Lewis and a forgotten war

Abstract

Abstract This article traces the long-running conflict between the interests of ‘Language’ and ‘Literature’ within English studies in Britain, using as springboard a letter from C. S. Lewis (then professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature), to Angus McIntosh (then professor of English Language and General Linguistics). Written in 1961 when ‘Lang. & Lit.’ hostilities were at their height, the letter points two ways: back to old battles in Schools of English between philologists and literary scholars, historians and critics, and forward to continuing disputes about the contribution of linguistics to literary criticism. The main focus is on the period 1957–1977, before the impact of structuralism and poststructuralism diverted the attention of literary scholars, but during the development of stylistics as a method of analysing literary texts. McIntosh emerges as a pioneering figure in the struggle to achieve an effective integration of literary and linguistic studies.