From: danny@cs.su.oz.au (Danny Yee)
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 1995 22:55:41 +1000
Subject: Book Review - The Discarded Image

     title: The Discarded Image
          : An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
        by: C.S. Lewis
 publisher: Cambridge University Press 1994 [1964]
  subjects: literary criticism, history of ideas
     other: 232 pages, index

I am not a Lewis fan: those of his religious writings I have read
contain a distressing mixture of tendentiousness and philosophical
shallowness and, although his fiction is worthwhile, he is not an
outstanding novelist.  _The Discarded Image_, however, was much
more impressive.  It is not a general introduction to medieval and
Renaissance literature, as the subtitle might suggest, but rather a
survey of its philosophical and intellectual background, a description
of that synthesis of Christian and classical ideas which Lewis calls
the "Medieval Model".  He begins by examining some of the sources which
contributed towards this model, most of which are now little known:
from the classical period Cicero's _Somnium Scipionis_, Lucan, Statius,
and Apuleius' _De Deo Socratis_; from late antiquity Chalcidius,
Macrobius, Pseudo-Dionysius and Boethius.  Lewis then describes the
medieval universe, from the trans-Lunar heavens to the Earth, and its
inhabitants -- the "angels" in the heavens, the ambiguously located
"longaevi" (of whom a faint echo survives in the modern "fairies"),
the animals and man, with his different Souls, Spirits and Humours.
The medieval conception of history and education is briefly touched on.
The final chapter considers the influence of the Model, and the
epilogue its epistemological status vis a vis the "modern Model".

_The Discarded Image_ is erudite, eloquent and urbane.  It is a very
broad overview, with the simplification which that entails, but I came
away from it feeling I had a much better feel for medieval literature.

--

%T	The Discarded Image
%S	An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
%A	C.S. Lewis
%I	Cambridge University Press
%C	Cambridge
%D	1994 [1964]
%O	paperback, index
%G	ISBN 0-521-47735-2
%P	x,232pp
%K	literary criticism, history of ideas

Danny Yee (danny@cs.su.oz.au)
8 August 1995


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