He wrote accessible theological works of an orthodox sort, content to pass on, to those less erudite than he, the wisdom of tradition. He was perhaps the greatest educated man of his generation … his greatest pedagogical work he did not do in the classroom, but in writing fiction, poetry, allegory. He grew up surrounded by and saturated with books, and his greatest work demonstrates his amazing capacities of recall. “He was a philosopher first, and then a master of literature, with his Christianity informing both. Lewis’s List, introduces Boethius (seventh on Lewis’s list) with But it was held in such high regard that Lewis declared “to acquire a taste for it is almost to become naturalized in the Middle Ages.” Boethius, Lewis and the Pagansīoethius paralleled Lewis in many ways, as Chris Armstrong, in C.S. The most translated book of the Middle Ages (Alfred the Great, Chaucer and Queen Elizabeth I all did so), Lewis claimed “until about two hundred years ago it would, I think, have been hard to find an educated man in any European country who did not love it.” ĭespite being considered a Medievalist of no mean rank (having authored The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, and the still highly regarded and much used, A Preface to Paradise Lost), Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy on Lewis’s list of 10 books that most deeply influenced his “vocational attitude and philosophy of life” represents the sole work remotely connected to the Medieval era.

Lewis’s List: The TEN Books that Influenced Him Most, t his book by the Roman philosopher Boethius (480-525 A.D.), in which he considers the whims of Lady Fortune after suffering ruin in fortune, society and name (and possibly anticipating his punishment of death) for trumped up charges of treason, Lewis cites as one of the most influential books in medieval literature, as well as one of the ten books that influenced Lewis the most.

The consolation of philosophy book 3