[DOWNLOAD] "Fantastical Fact, Home, Or Other? the Imagined 'Medieval' in C. S. Lewis." by Mythlore * eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: Fantastical Fact, Home, Or Other? the Imagined 'Medieval' in C. S. Lewis.
Author : Mythlore
Release Date : January 22, 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
Pages : * pages
Size : 188 KB

Description

FANTASY and reality, imagination and reason, desire and holiness, romanticism and apologetics: these and other analogous pairings are often conceived as diametric opposites psychologically, spiritually, cognitively and experientially in contemporary Western culture (a superannuated legacy of Enlightenment rationalism and the full-blown Romantic reaction). C. S. Lewis experienced and explored these tensions at a very personal level, through essays into the genres of autobiography, fiction, criticism, theology and apologetics, ultimately fusing them in a vision simultaneously literary and spiritual (Schakel, Reason). This paper will focus on Lewis's use of 'the medieval' in That Hideous Strength and The Chronicles of Narnia. His particular characterization of this concept provides an intriguing example of the ways in which it has been appropriated and utilized by modern authors. It also enables a focused investigation of Lewis's understanding of the role of imagination in apprehending dimensions of human existence denied by naturalistic rationalism, but nonetheless equally 'real.' He defined this in critical terminology as 'myth' and attempted to create a 'taste' of the 'real' through the medium of fiction, drawing heavily upon his imaginative acquaintance with 'the medieval' as well as his scholarly knowledge in order to do so (Lewis, "Myth Became Fact"; "Fairy Stories"; Evans). The medieval period, of course, formed the primary area of Lewis's expertise as an academic. He was prepared to define it in comprehensive terms, as characterized by a unified world view that incorporated animals, humans, society, earth, heaven, spiritual beings and God within a single, all-encompassing framework. This is described succinctly in his posthumous publication, The Discarded Image. Furthermore, his most influential scholarly text, The Allegory of Love, traces what he saw as one of the primary features of medieval literature, chivalric love, through the course of its development in European culture. These texts essentially define his understanding of the medieval world and its values, recreating it in broad brushstrokes for a twentieth-century audience, and providing a fuller background to the various guises it assumes within his fiction.