Mention of C.S. Lewis Discarded Image and Pilgrim's Regress

Quick review of The Discarded Image:

A very good introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature, constructing the Model of the Universe that was popularly held at that time. Lewis builds the Model by citing a substantial number of works that address cosmology, astronomy, medicine, rhetoric, etc. Subjects referred to by medieval authors are compiled, such as the characteristics of people described by the planet they were born under or the balance of their humours; the inhabitants of earth, aether, and the sky; daemons, angels and faeries; the separation of body and soul. A very good reference, and the beginning of a very long reading list, most of which may be found online.


Quick review of Pilgrim’s Regress:

A book that is as useful for understanding Lewis's personal experience as his autobiography, Surprised by Joy. He takes up some of the same themes, this time defining his desire for God as Romanticism, which he later calls Joy. The story is of the journey of the character John, as he searches for something to fulfill that desire for something he can't yet define. He meets a variety of characters who reflect philosophies that Lewis considered before becoming a Christian. For example, there are characters who represent Freudians, Epicureans, Classicists. Through the adventure John realizes that things such as sex, knowledge, aesthetic beauty, do not fulfill that desire.

The story is told as an allegory, modeled after John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, because, as Lewis writes in the Afterword: "But in fact all good allegory exists not to hide but reveal; to make the inner world more palpable by giving it an (imagined) concrete embodiment.... For when allegory is at its best, it approaches myth, which must be grasped with the imagination, not with the intellect." (208) Nonetheless, it is engages the intellect too.

Sexsim in C.S. Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress?

In Pilgrim’s Regress, a modernization of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, C. S. Lewis portrays a few female characters, though not all, as ‘brown girls.’ These girls, portrayed as another species, like the dwarves and giants in the book, pose a problem for the character John, who is on his spiritual journey to reach the island he envisioned in a moment of joy. The first brown girl appeals to him in a way he has not experienced before. They have sex, and for every time they have sex, another brown girl is born. The book is allegorical, like Bunyan’s work. The brown girls come to represent his guilt. The first girl now tries to make him settle down and take care of the family, to ignore his vision of the island. Still he sets out to find it. There are a few more times he is tempted by brown girls, even some he does not recognize as such, always to settle with what they have, because the island isn’t real, and this sensuous experience is. More than once he hears the girl say, “I’m what you’re looking for.”

Lewis’s purpose must be kept in mind. He, or rather his characters, realize that lust, love of the body, imitates love of the spirit. In his book, The Four Loves, Lewis categorizes these two different kinds of love as “Eros” and “Agape,” the first for the opposite sex, the second for God. In Pilgrim’s Regress, the protagonist realizes Eros, (what I prefer to call romantic love), is not the fulfillment of his desire for the heavenly. He finds sex enjoyable, even ecstatic initially, but it is not what he desired.... (Continued in ZEDS e-newsletter.)

The argument he makes that romantic love is the lesser substitute for agape love is important and still relevant. It is not just a medieval concept. It still justifies warning. Lewis notes just how prevalent this idea and practice of idealizing romantic love has become in his book, Allegory of Love. In the commentary on allegorical literature, he notes how influential works like the Romance of the Rose was on medieval thought and thereafter. From the antiquities of Greek and Roman writers until the Middle Ages romantic love was seldom written of, and certainly not central to literature. After the late medieval period, with the works of Dante, Boccaccio, and Chaucer, literature is preoccupied with romantic love. Few authors in that time conceive of agape love, in comparison. It is true to this day. In the age of Hollywood romantic love is consistently shown as the highest man can experience, and sex is the equivalent to Holy Communion, only it’s become so common it’s more like grabbing a quick bite to eat in the car. And it’s recognized as the false substitute for the soul by real life experience.

C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress, (New York: Eerdman’s Publishing Co. 1981).

A Medieval Approach to Modernity

One good book leads to another, and another, and another, like a bus tour, and along the way you note places to come back to. I’ve bought C. S. Lewis’s Allegory of Love, after searching for a copy for less than fifty dollars over the past several years. I was quite anxious to read the out of print book. (Incidentally, I don’t know why it is out of print since it is often referred to by contemporary essayists. In medieval studies the book from 1936 is an important reference.) The book is a history of medieval literature, specifically works on the subject of courtly love in the form of allegory. Within the bibliography Lewis reviews (more than critiques) the central works of The Romance of the Rose, Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, and Spenser’s Faery Queene.

Reading this book of literary criticism prompted me to search for many titles of medieval works referred to. I am extremely happy that many of the works, in their entirety, are available online at Luminarium.org, Project Gutenberg, and TEAMS Middle English Texts. I no longer must resort to checking out large anthologies that only offer extracts. I am reading John Lydgate’s poetry (an author hardly known and usually categorized as one of a Chaucerian school, but who produced twice as much as his idol). He models himself after Chaucer, but he lacks his predecessor’s originality and diversity. His work is enjoyable, however, especially for expressing the courtly ideal of love. I am also reading The Romance of the Rose, which, as I read more commentaries, was a very influential book during the medieval period.

I must have a subject to the essay, besides a little criticism. I need to have something of an issue, don’t I? The one that comes to mind first is one of self-analysis, one to answer if I hope to have any success in the blogosphere: why read medieval literature?

While I have said in the past that I am an anachronism, not at all modern in thought or lifestyle, there is the exception of the computer and internet that I use daily. With the spread of technology comes the spread of information, which is more accessible than ever before. With this information we have the wider diversity of cultures to learn from, and we may customize our lifestyles. We are not limited to the culture that is common around us, except for those that choose to prohibit the technology. You are able to study religions you had little access to before the information revolution; you can study other countries and could even plan down to the details of moving there; you can complete college courses at home; you can correspond with people around the world easier than ever.

My point in all this is you can choose your lifestyle, or what I would call your own culture. I have built something of a culture of my own in my home. If I can choose my lifestyle from all the cultures I can learn of, without the limitations of space, (for instance, I can love English culture as much as American without living there), why limit myself in time? The spread of information includes a great treasure of history. With all that history offers, why must I be modern? This is why I am a Conservative. It’s not that I necessarily want to prevent change, but change for change’s sake is not a good reason. The phrase ‘change is good’ can only be proven after it is the past. I think the desire of people, en masse, for something novel is juvenile.

So I study history, so I read literature of past times, for good ideas to build my lifestyle, my own culture. Here are a few ideas I have recently discovered that I want to include.

“Be courteous and approachable, speaking gently and reasonably to high and low alike, and when you go along the streets, be sure to make it your habit to be the first to greet other people. And if someone should greet you first, do not remain dumb, but take care to return the greeting at once, and without delay. Next, be sure never to use rude words or coarse expressions: your mouth should never be opened to pronounce the name of anything base.”
Guillame de Lorris. The Romance of the Rose. (New York: Oxford University Press 1994) 32-33.

It would be foolish of me to dispel wisdom given from the past, or to think it wise only for one culture, one situation, one time. If it was it would have been only a novel thought.