The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
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Overview
In The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. It describes the “image” discarded by later years as “the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organization of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe.” This, Lewis’ last book, has been hailed as “the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind.”
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- The Medieval Situation
- Reservations
- Selected Materials: The Classical Period
- Selected Materials: The Seminal Period
- The Heavens
- The Longaevi
- Earth and Her Inhabitants
- The Influence of the Model
Top Highlights
“But they were the age not only of her authority, but of authorities. If their culture is regarded as a response to environment, then the elements in that environment to which it responded most vigorously were manuscripts. Every writer, if he possibly can, bases himself on an earlier writer, follows an auctour: preferably a Latin one. This is one of the things that differentiate the period almost equally from savagery and from our modern civilisation. In a savage community you absorb your culture, in part unconsciously, from participation in the immemorial pattern of behaviour, and in part by word of mouth, from the old men of the tribe.” (Page 4)
“The great masters do not take any Model quite so seriously as the rest of us. They know that it is, after all, only a model, possibly replaceable.” (Page 13)
“There was nothing which medieval people liked better, or did better, than sorting out and tidying up.” (Page 9)
“To be always looking at the map when there is a fine prospect before you shatters the ‘wise passiveness’ in which landscape ought to be enjoyed. But to consult a map before we set out has no such ill effect. Indeed it will lead us to many prospects; including some we might never have found by following our noses.” (Page ix)
“I hope to persuade the reader not only that this Model of the Universe is a supreme medieval work of art but that it is in a sense the central work, that in which most particular works were embedded, to which they constantly referred, from which they drew a great deal of their strength.” (Page 11)
Erudite and graceful, filled with anecdote and analogy, illuminating the images of the past.
—Los Angeles Times
It does you good to read [Lewis’] learned books, not because you are preached at, but because to read them is for the mind what a walk over fine, sometimes rough, country in good weather is for the healthy body.
—Birmingham Post
Nobody else could have imposed such form on such a mass of matter, and written a book so wide in scope. Whether we were his pupils in the classroom or no, we are all his pupil and we shall not look upon his like again.
—The Listener
- Title: The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
- Author: C.S. Lewis
- Publisher: HarperOne
- Publication Date: 2013
- Pages: 238
- Christian Group: Evangelicals and Anglican
- Resource Type: Literature
- Topic: Christianity and Culture
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classic Mere Christianity. Read more about his life and legacy.