Just want to draw attention to this enthralling study by Michael Ward. Foretaste here. Reviews here.
For anyone who has puzzled over The Chronicles of Narnia, I'd recommend it.
Lewis often thought of himself as the last premodern, resisting the modern demythologising of nature and the lost significance of imaginative readings of the world. He thought God had left clues all over the place, stories about himself woven into ancient myths, ‘good dreams’ which leave us groping after what just escapes our memory. I should probably try to read The Allegory of Love (1936), Lewis' influential Study of Medieval Tradition.
“In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas,” said Eustace in Voyage of the DawnTreader, only to be told by a wise man that “even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
No axe to grind - dunno what to do with romantic Lit. Crit., but it is quite fun. I guess it does make me wonder how I should think of the biblical cosmology without engaging in total demythologisation. Maybe Peter Bolt's book is worth a read.
mercredi 2 juillet 2008
night after night
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Indeed, Lewis' mythology, etc., is fascinating - but it seems to be quite linked to his Platonism in some aspects. E.g. of the stars: that is not what a star is but only what it is made of... Then we see at the end of time that everything we experience is merely a copy of the Real, the heavenly: we only knew 'what is was made of', and then we see 'what it is'? As I really resonate with the whole shadow-reality thing, of the new creation being more real than we presently are (hence Jesus' resurrection body passes through the walls of the old creation), I'm not quite sure what to make of it. He linked his old mythology with his Platonism most clearly in That Hideous Strength.
Quite so. I'd not seen it like that before. I'm not sure what to make of it either!
The one place I have begun to think has been with the post-reformation, de-allegorising of nature...I guess Lewis was keen to salvage something of it.
I wrote a little comment here - at the bottom I linked to 2 articles I'd be interested what you make of.
ps do you think platonism is anti christian?
My bro (a self titled naive realist) thought of the abstract realm plato lacked as just the mind of God. Things like numbers exist there.
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