Rating: 
Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: On Excellent Introduction (Revisited)
Review: "The Discarded Image" first appeared in print in 1964, the year following Lewis' death. It first appeared in paperback in 1967, and my copy of that edition is heavily marked up and falling to pieces after years of use, in High School and as an undergraduate and graduate student. It is safe to conclude that I am an admirer of the book. (Also of Lewis' fiction, and his other works of criticism; with a few exceptions, the books on Christianity which made him widely known are of little interest to me.) This review was originally written to go with the current paperback edition; I have slightly altered it to go with the separate listing of a hardcover edition."The Discarded Image" contains the substance (and presumably the final wording) of Lewis' lectures introducing medieval and Renaissance literature to students at Cambridge (and, presumably, earlier in his career at Oxford). It is admirably concise, remarkably clear, and, for anyone who does not remember that it is only an introduction, at times frustratingly limited. In a very few pages he encapsulates some of the main features of thought between, roughly, the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the publication of "Paradise Lost". It represents the essence of a lifetime of actually reading the literature, and he is able to illustrate his points with convincing, and sometimes rather obscure, examples. On the basis of my own experience, "The Discarded Image" is helpful not only in understanding the literature of the Christian West during the Middle Ages, but also a lot of Jewish and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Islamic literature from the same period. Ptolemy and Aristotle, at least, seem to have been everywhere. In this context, it is perhaps fair to warn potential readers coming to the book directly from Lewis-the-Christian that he displays throughout a remarkable sympathy for a variety of views (pagan, Neo-Platonic, medieval Catholic, and so forth) which they may find disturbing. Education, not edification, is his primary focus. (Of course, there are those who refuse to consider Lewis a real Christian at all, but an agent of the Devil, and possibly even the Pope -- but they probably wouldn't dream of opening this book, anyway.) To use a catch-phrase introduced to scholarship in 1962 by Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Lewis is presenting an "Old Paradigm" of the Universe, the very presuppositions of which have been replaced by a series of "New Paradigms" during the last four centuries. It describes a vast but finite world of natural hierarchies, in which much that we find commonplace was rare (and vice versa). It is an effort to equip the student to think and perhaps even feel in medieval, not modern, terms. I can think of no one who has so successfully evoked the sensation of living in a Ptolemaic or Aristotelian cosmos. By the time this book appeared, Lewis' well-earned reputation as a Christian apologist had largely overtaken his status as a prominent critic of medieval and renaissance literature (established by "The Allegory of Love" in the 1930s). Although "The Discarded Image" has generally been in print, it never seems to have attained the prominence some (myself included) think it deserves. Even Norman Cantor's praise for the book in "Inventing the Middle Ages" is moderated by complaints about what it doesn't contain, and the dispatch-like brevity imposed by its origin. With reference to an observation by another reviewer: I can sympathize with anyone found quoting "The Discarded Image" without attribution. After numerous readings, I have sometimes found it hard to remember just where an idea or turn of phrase came from, only to recognize it there while looking for something else. The paperback "Canto" edition, with an exceptionally attractive cover, should fit most needs; libraries should, obviously, find the hardcover version a more durable investment. Lewis collectors will consult their own budgets.
Rating:
Summary: A superb analysis of the medieval mind.
Review: Although this book was written to introduce students of medieval literature to the subject, it is far more than a book about books. Lewis makes it clear that, to understand men of another time, we must first understand their view of the world, the influences that bore upon them, and how they dealt with them. Most interesting is his use of a 'model' to describe the medieval authors' universe (for only the learned would endeavour to describe a universe), for in our day, thirty-five years after The Discarded Image was written, we place great credence in computer models. Well worth your time, if only to show that there are more ways than one to look at - shall we call it creation? - and there may be truth in more than one of them. We must not lose track, in this hypercritical age, of these different models and modes of thought; it is well, indeed, to remember that a man of 1400 is not to be judged by the standards of 1999. Nor is a modern man to be judged by the standards of half a millennium ago.
Rating:
Summary: An introduction to medieval and renaissance literature
Review: For those interested in studying medieval and renaissance literature, this book is all but indispensible for understanding the world view of the writers of that period (and thus understanding the books they wrote.) In some ways, I believe this is the best book Lewis ever wrote. However, I doubt the book would appeal to the general reader, and more interesting material would be available in Lewis's fiction or works of theology.
Rating:
Summary: a really cool book
Review: I liked the book. I was nice. read it.
Rating:
Summary: A "summum bonum" of scholarship
Review: I was pleased to see a reference to Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by a previous reviewer. This reviewer has, I believe, achieved an understanding of the heart of what Lewis was trying to gain here: the ability to insert, into the minds of his readers, a contingent understanding of the frames within which the Middle Ages reading public saw their world.
What Lewis is describing was not metaphysics. It was real physics, the way real people looked at a real world. "It was not true," Lewis admits, but he goes on to make two further claims that cannot, I think, be disproved:
1. The medieval model of the universe was filled with "delight." It was beautiful in a way that inspired poets and artists of all sorts to creativity. Lewis points out that the mentality of a creative artist of the Middle Ages, inspired by the Discarded Image as a model of the universe, was much less egotistical than many creative people are expected to be today. Artists routinely produced masterpieces and then did not sign them. Simply working on a corner of the Model was enough.
2. The medieval model of the universe was not true and has since been disproved by modern physics, but we can have no assurance that the models we follow and believe in today are true, either. In fact, to philosophers of human thinking like Kuhn and Lewis, every "model" that we come to believe in from time to time is contingent; all of them either have been, or some day will be, superseded by new models.
Lewis was a Christian, and he felt an Appreciative-love for the European Middle Ages that he wanted his readers to share. I hope the readers of this review will believe me when I say that Lewis did not over-play his own religion in this book. He fearlessly makes it clear that, if the Middle Ages and their aesthetic model of the universe had aspects of beauty in them, these aspects were as likely to be due to elements of pagan survival as they were to Christianity. We are repeatedly reminded that the European Middle Ages were not a high-tech, totalitarian theocracy, but a very poor world in which a wide variety of Christian and pre-Christian cultural forces jostled with each other.
Rating:
Summary: A sublime experience
Review: Table of Contents: Preface I The Medieval Situation II Reservations III Selected Materials: the Classical Period A The "Somnium Scipionis" B Lucan C Statius, Claudian, and the Lady "Natura" D Apuleius, "De Deo Socratis" IV Selected Materials: the Seminal Period A Chalcidius B Macrobius C Pseudo-Dionysius D Boethius V The Heavens A The Parts of the Universe B Their Operations C Their Inhabitants VI The Logaevi VII Earth and Her Inhabitants A The Earth B Beasts C The Human Soul D Rational Soul E Sensitive and Vegetable Soul F Soul and Body G The Human Body H The Human Past I The Seven Liberal Arts VIII The Influence of the Model Epilogue Index In his "An Experiment in Criticism", Lewis suggests that the heart of literary experience is the surrender by the reader to the work being read; that good reading is the entering into the views of others and going out of ourselves. With regard to medieval literature, this requires two things: the facts behind a host of unfamiliar references, and even more importantly, a remake of how to think of reality. Readers who insist on reading works of the period with their modernism intact are "as travellers who carry their resolute Englishry with them all over the continent, mixing only with other English tourists, enjoying all they see for its 'quaintness', and having no wish to realise what those ways of life, those churches, those vineyards, mean to the natives." While Lewis says "I have no quarrel with people who approach the past in that spirit", he also says of them, in a somewhat chilling echo of the Sermon on the Mount: "They have their reward." It is to those who want a much greater reward that Lewis directs "The Discarded Image." While he provides the reader with hard information concerning medieval philosophy, cosmology, biology, education and literature, imparting the individual facts is the lesser part of his purpose. What he really aims at is to completely detach the reader from all of the unconscious beliefs and attitudes that a lifetime spent in modern culture brings, and substitute for them those of the educated medieval man. What the description I've just given you of this book does not do is to describe what the experience of having that done to you is like. I found it compelling and disorienting. One by one, the familiar intellectual landmarks were stripped away from my mental image of the world, and strange new ones put into their place. Vertigo is the word that comes closest to describing the feeling; I found I had to stop reading every couple dozen pages to give myself time to recover. This was so even though my familiarity with the philosophy, theology, and cosmology of the period was, by any non-specialist standard, quite high. The reason, I think was not so much that my knowledge was inferior to Lewis' (although of course it certainly was) as that I had only thought of these matters from an external "objective" point of view - I had never before tried to actually enter into that view of the world before. The result of Lewis' instruction on the matter was a combination of delight at the new insights so gained and humiliation at the revelation of the deep limitations of the "knowledge" I had possessed before. In sum, I found reading "the Discarded Image" to be an extraordinary experience, and its value in no way depends on my using the information gained to identify some off-hand reference of Chaucer's. What Lewis describes in "An Experiment in Criticism", he demonstrates here - how completely different reading is when it is done well compared to when it is merely done.
Rating:
Summary: A Lesson in Good Teaching
Review: The title sounds like something for the specialist in Medieval literature, doesn't it? Don't be put off by that or by the subject matter. There are a number of reasons to read this book. Here is Lewis the common teacher, not the religious writer. You will find no polemic here. But, paradoxically, Lewis may be more persuasive and display more passion when he is neither trying to persuade nor be passionate. This book originated in a series of lectures, and it shows. There is love for both subject and reader on every page. Lewis writes simply and beautifully, so those of you interested in fine prose will find much here. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the comparison Lewis draws between ancient and Medieval thought and the modern. Sometimes these comparisons are direct, but more often they are subtle, implicit. But, by continually pairing the two worldviews, whether directly or not, Lewis leads us, like the master teacher he was, to reflect on our own way of thinking. For example, Lewis highlights good and bad aspects of Medieval writing. For one, Medieval writing revels in detail. This can be rich or boring, depending. But, the reason for such detail, Lewis suggests, is that Medieval writers were contemplating a world they loved and felt part of. Thus, to a lover, details about one's beloved are never overdone. In contrast, most of us feel somewhat alienated in today's society, don't we? Lewis also suggests that Medieval writers copied earlier writers. Early writings are, like Cathedrals, products of many craftsmen. The need to be original or creative was subsumed by humility. Medieval writers did not want focus, like so many of today's artists, on themselves. Instead, they wanted to direct attention to contemplation of the figures and subjects of their writing. Pride in craft may have been present, but is was subordinate to love of subje
Rating:
Summary: An excellent introduction
Review: This book is an invaluable introduction to medieval and Renaissance literature, including works as late as Shakespeare's--if you don't understand the material in this book, many of Shakespeare's references will be opaque. Lewis introduces the reader to what it felt like to believe in the hierarchical geocentric cosmos and in other aspects of medieval philosophy. He disposes of common misconceptions--very few medieval thinkers believed in a flat earth, for example--and also explains the medieval outlook toward books and authority. Aside from serving the student of literature, it should be a very handy work for writers and roleplayers.
Rating:
Summary: Lewis's finest hour
Review: This book is an utter, unqualified delight. That C.S.Lewis was a fine writer is not open to dispute. It is also no secret that he was a master of discursive, analytical, sympathetic literary criticism. (The collection of articles published posthumously as "On Literature" by Walter Hooper contains some fine examples.) We are also only too well acquainted with Lewis the bully, abusing his prodigious gifts as a debater and marshaller of arguments in the service of his religion. "Mere Christianity" is an overwhelming argument for God - but it leaves the bitter aftertaste of intellectual coercion. In "The Discarded Image", he does not wish to convince us of anything. He only wishes to explain. We are invited along on a tour of the beliefs and opinions about the world held in the Middle Ages. (The travel-guide metaphor is Lewis's own, from the Introduction.) The effect is of an immensely well-informed and articulate man discursing on his favourite subject. Mere knowledge and enthusiasm on the part of the author would not be enough to make this unusual book interesting. It is Lewis's combination of strengths as writer that bring Medieval cosmology, religion and science to life. But such is his skill that we almost don't notice what has gone into the presentation. Only when we reflect on what must have been required to organise facts, determine what is essential, leave out what isn't, use analogies, draw distinctions, make comparisons and follow lines of thought does the achievement really sink in. For example, his description of Arisotlean astronomy and its legacy to the Middle Ages is a masterpiece of brevity. It tells us everything we need to know for what follows, and nothing more; yet simutaneously we experience a sense of the vastness of the subject-matter. Our curiosity is awakened, our immediate needs satisfied and our imagination stimulated. THIS is writing! The section on Mother Nature shows Lewis the philologist to great effect. He first has to disengage our minds from the modern conception of Nature, which he does by investigating what we actually do mean by the word nowadays and how that has evolved over three hundred years. At that point, we are ready to understand the entirely different relationship to the world that was conveyed by the same word in the Middle Ages. Throughout, there is not a wasted word or an unnecessary turn of phrase. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: A Lesson in Good Teaching
Review: This is a superb, classic analysis of the mind of this age and its fruits. One does not hold the Chair of the subject area at Cambridge University without having a rather thorough command of it! Interesting how overwhelming brilliance in evidence and argument in a subject like this is lauded while it is thought bullying or coercive in another where one does not wish to be informed, confronted or convinced (Lewis' writings and Socratic debates in Christian apologetics)! In the 1950's, Lewis was on the cover of Time Magazine for the power of his lucid works with the subcaption, "His heresy: Christianity" (referring to the contrary bias of the academic community).
| 
