Finally this year, I earned my keep at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, MI by presenting a paper. For as long as some folks remember, there have been slews of sessions on J R R Tolkien, and a resounding silence on C S Lewis. This seems passing odd, given that Lewis contributed more to the field of medieval studies than did Tolkien. My theory for the many Tolkien sessions is that so many medievalists first got into their field under the influence of the grand master of fantasy.
In any case, two sessions of three papers each were presented at Kalamazoo 2011 on the subject of Lewis’s and the “Discarded Image” (the medievals’ worldview as he presented it to his Cambridge students, published posthumously in the the book of the same name). Here is my contribution to the second of those sessions. As always, reproduction of all or any part of the following without prior written consent by me is strictly prohibited.
The Intuitive Medievalism of C. S. Lewis
Paper given May 15, 2011, International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, MI
Two words in my title require some explanation. “Medievalism” is the easier of the two, I take it to denote the ways people since the Middle Ages have appropriated, reframed, and selectively highlighted medieval culture, to fit their own questions and agendas. Lewis was, professionally, a professor of literature, and he spent much time reading, teaching, and producing scholarly works on the Middle Ages, both its literature and its culture. And of course we needn’t go far in the work of Lewis, or of such of his modern friends as Tolkien, Williams, and Sayers, to find that the varied versions of “the medieval” plied by these authors were full of distinctly modern, or more accurately, anti-modern, concerns. Continue reading
Medieval Wisdom for Modern Christians
