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CS Lewis 60 Years On · Mythmakers

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome to With Makers.
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  With Makers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy creatives brought to you by the
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  Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding. I'm an author and I also run the centre
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  and I'm joined by my regular podcast partner, Jacob Renica and Jacob would you like to introduce
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  yourself? Sure. Jacob Renica, background in myth, world literature and writer in different forms
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  and formats currently working as a narrative designer and manager at Robinson Berger Games.
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  And as you can tell, we've got a transatlantic conversation going on here which is very
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  appropriate to our subject. This month on the 22nd of November marks the 60th anniversary since
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  the death of C.S. Lewis, who was of course one of the two big inklings who we at the Oxford Centre
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  for Fantasy are dedicating our centre to. And to mark this, I thought it would be a good idea to
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  just stop and think about C.S. Lewis 60 years on. His day of his death was an unusual day in
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  world history because two other people died on the day people who had more profile than him
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  at the time and probably subsequently because one of those was J.F.K. John F. Kennedy.
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  That was the day he was assassinated and the news airways were obviously going to be flooded
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  with that tragedy. But also the sci-fi writer Alters Huxley died on that day. So another great
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  figure in literature passed away and then quietly in a hospital in Oxford C.S. Lewis passed away.
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  So what do you think is your initial impressions of C.S. Lewis 60 years on Jacob? What do you see as
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  the headlines of his legacy? Which bits of his work are still relevant? Still relevant. I mean
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  immediately relevant our popular media Netflix is working on a Chronicles of Narnia series
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  while actually films films right now that's completely clear exactly how it's going to be
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  just films or films with kind of a television or streaming series. But that's been in the news
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  a lot lately with Greta Gerwig who most recently did an adaptation, an excellent adaptation of
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  little women. So there's a lot of excitement. Oh yeah, in Barbie yeah most most frequently
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  adapting a children's toy into a film that had some really clever I'm very impressed with her.
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  By the way I just listened to the other day to an area with her on script notes, an excellent podcast
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  for people in storytelling that's mostly talking about screenwriting but she did an interview
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  about her adaptation of little women and I was just very impressed with her approach to
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  honoring Alters source material and finding what's it like kind of the heart of particular stories
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  and as well as telling a story that intersects with relevance for audiences today. So Narnia,
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  as I was going to say it's Greta Gerwig who just did Barbie if you like the Barbie movie. It probably
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  won't be the same as the Barbie movie probably fewer references to popular toy lines but yeah so that's
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  one that I think that probably most popular for people regardless of kind of their background
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  in academic or popular media that Chronicles of Narnia is probably broadly speaking probably what
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  is best known for and in terms of media coverage that's the sort of thing with the previous Disney
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  films or the three films adaptations to produced by Disney and the other one not but those are
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  still you know the advertising and everything that comes along with that lots lots there but yes
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  so that's all I'll pause there and turn it back over to you for what other sorts of things that
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  you think what's continued to today. Yeah so I definitely agree about the Narnia series and it's
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  very big in fantasy just allowing a popularisation of the powerful fantasy. Well come and talk about
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  that in a bit more later on but I think it's helpful to think about him having three sides
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  to him one is the academic role that he took in particularly medieval literature and then we'll
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  touch briefly on whether any of that is still relevant then there's obviously the large
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  body of Christian apologetics which is one of the places where he gets his sort of strongest
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  adherence things like the screw tape letters so that's obviously literature as well
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  but mere Christianity surprised by joy a grief observed and many others some very interesting
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  Christian writings and then finally obviously his role as a writer of fiction and we have talked
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  about it as part of this podcast before but he's not just Narnia he is also the ransom trilogy the
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  space trilogy he's also a book called Till We Have Faces which is absolutely fascinating I'm
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  going to talk about that in a bit and there are some other works that he found time to do in his
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  very busy schedule. Part of the apologetic side of him of course is that he was a public speaker
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  doing important work during the Second World War as a sort of addressing the public and
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  became like the equivalent of today's TV Don so he was one of the first of the academics to become
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  famous in a mass media shit way whereas before that they were all hidden behind in ivory towers
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  with just their books on the shelves then he and others of his generation began to sort of come out
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  and be known as oh yes that chap from Oxford thank Cambridge and be called on for opinions
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  looking at what how he was received afterwards I think in a way he's been a bit unfortunate
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  in that the major biography on him was the AN Wilson one which some years ago now and it has
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  some amazing puff on the back by the way never take too much notice of the puff on the back of a book
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  but anyway it won the Whitbread award for the best biography Tolstoy
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  AM Wilson's biography of Tolstoy so let's get this right one the Whitbread award for the best
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  biography of 1988 so there was an expectation that his next book would be amazing and indeed
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  you know John Sutherland of noted literary professor here in Oxford said one of our most
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  stimulating biographers I don't know he's talking about this book because this book is I think
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  really troubling in its tone to its subject he doesn't like CS Lewis just flicking through again
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  I remember having this was my first serious attempt to get to know that CS Lewis as a person
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  and I ended up thinking oh I don't like this man very much and not AN Wilson but the subject
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  and now I know more about CS Lewis I've discovered it's more of a problem with the attitude of the
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  biographer um he talks about CS Lewis having a cult around him hmm that's a bit strong he's got
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  fans but I can't see a cult and he's definitely wanting to um well CS Lewis wasn't a plaster
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  but he's definitely trying to look for the faults not very generous spirited
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  yeah and then of course CS Lewis has also found detractors in people like Philip Pullman
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  who condemned Narnia as being dodgy and unpleasant there again that does seem quite personal when
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  you actually dig into the the Pullman comments about CS Lewis it does seem to be a bit of annoyance
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  real real anger that when he read Narnia there was something in Narnia that didn't work for him
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  he doesn't like the idea that Diggory could cure his mother which is one of the plot lines in
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  the magician's nephew he absolutely hated that I've heard him talk about this actually um but of
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  course when you look can you remember the biography this is CS Lewis writing the book he wished he
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  could have done for his own mother who did die and I don't think that's wrong you can use fantasy
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  to imagine curing your mom if you want so I don't know I it seems as though maybe up at it like
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  this I think CS Lewis if you imagine all the inklings of the cheese board and you've got really
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  lovely um popular cheddar Tolkien and you've got really say any um peculiar ash washed cheese
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  that is Charles Williams I think that CS Lewis is a bit like the really strong camembert the one
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  that some people love and some people hate and I think during his life he was a bit like that though
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  he was known as a really good friend to many people he could get into real ding dong's with
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  other people in academia and elsewhere and he came out swinging so punches that is so I think
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  that it's probably not surprising to find that he's still a sort of controversial figure for some
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  people a bit later on that's my take anyway shall we just talk about the academic side I don't know
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  if you know much about Jacob but I think there are two big books to think of one is the allegory
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  of love and the other is the discarded image the allegory of love is looking at the way allegories
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  were used and throughout widely throughout medieval literature I'm a bit reading that as undergraduate
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  and discarded image talks about the Aristotelian version of the heavens and the sort of the way that
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  the physics the astronomy of the medieval period was set up in a completely different way to
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  ours and how that influences how people wrote about things I've recently bumped into a few people
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  in Oxford to say oh no no we don't read him anymore that's probably not quite fair because I think
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  not many old academics get read they're like that idea in wasn't it Newton who said we stand on
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  the shoulders of giants that actually at academia you move on you say that work is done we move on to
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  synthesize that and it's my time yeah I think that's probably what's going on and I think there's
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  actually no harm in reading them there's nothing that's wrong in them it may be people feel they
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  understand the argument and are ready to move on but he was a good he was a good academic in his
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  own right and I think he also did some editing on Chaucer as well oh there's also what was that
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  right yeah he definitely yeah he definitely he definitely did he definitely did work on Chaucer as
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  well as Dante um uh yes uh yeah Dante's a divine comedy was a big uh focus of this he actually
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  worked closely with Dorothy Sayers when she was doing her English translation of the divine comedy
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  so he was essentially kind of reviewing her text as she went along um one of the other works that uh
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  he did a little by just an endorsement of discarded image I just uh read that within the past few
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  months um it's really excellent view one of the things I think that makes it compelling as an
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  academic work is that it really tries to inhabit the world view a medieval world view from the inside
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  and and try to help you understand what that looks what it have looked and felt like um and Lewis
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  know famously uh when he was I think it was uh it was speech I believe it was it was uh when he's
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  beginning at Cambridge um teaching there that he described himself as a dinosaur uh that you know he
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  actually believed or agreed with or somehow felt you know resonated strongly with this medieval
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  world view and so even if what he said people didn't agree with he was at least valuable as a specimen
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  for study uh to see what somebody who actually buys into some of these uh more emotional
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  emotionally oriented views of the world and the cosmos uh could look like which he
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  depicts uh in in a certain degree you see that kind of worked out in the ransom or space trilogy you
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  see it's some of the work that he does there and uh discarded image kind of personified or explored
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  and really imaginative terms um especially as they're talking about what it feels like in space and
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  out of the silent planet um some strong resonance is there um so really valuable yeah if you're at
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  all interested in the medieval way of of looking and thinking at the world and humanity's place within
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  it um and it's emotional significance uh I definitely recommend discarded image uh one of
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  loses works that I engage with in my academic study um uh part of my dissertation a good third of
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  my dissertation dealt with uh paradise lost uh so one of the things that I consulted there was Lewis's
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  preface to uh paradise lost and so that one I can't say is is one that you know it's it is valuable
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  it's more valuable as kind of an overview to uh you know what an ethic is and what uh Milton
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  was kind of reacting to and um point of view was at in in writing paradise lost uh but it's not
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  something that is regularly referred to by contemporary um Milton scholars um but nevertheless
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  it's something that people are aware of and and have you know referenced um even if it's just in kind
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  of doing the history of scholarship on uh something which is foundational for you know any
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  any major work like you were saying so any any uh uh worthwhile academic work is going to
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  be aware of the entire kind of academic conversation up to that point and so Lewis definitely
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  be by virtue of the fact that he was participating and was published and was in conversation with
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  people during those times it is still part of the conversation if even if it's not a central part of
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  the conversation today it still is it is a legacy of it. I think also because of the way he and talking
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  helped shape the Oxford syllabus that has a relevance to the way medievalism has been not
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  rejected as being quirky and sort of uh you know let's just go on to the modern school that's
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  where it's really happening I think they made people think about English literature stretching
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  back into middle English and old English in a way that's that that stress the continuum in that
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  which could have been lost I mean we can't do the alternate history version of this but
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  it certainly helped preserve in the English literature world a sense of the long history of
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  English literature rather than a truncated one that would begin with say Shakespeare or Shakespeare's
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  contemporaries instead. Okay well the apologetics I'm not an expert on these at all and so other
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  than knowing that they're incredibly important to many courses of study particularly in the states
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  some books I found touched me personally I found mere Christianity wonderful to read
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  to critique letters really funny very insightful about all sort of flavours of humanity
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  yeah and I think that what strikes me about his apologetics is he has a very
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  love straightforward way of putting things you don't have to scratch your head about
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  and like in Kierkegaard or Kant or something where you're trying to work out what they actually
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  meaning is it's something which the plain person on the street can understand and I think
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  that's a real gift because he's writing about very difficult subjects to grasp but he sort of
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  makes them seem easy not easy graspable graspable right do you have a favourites one yeah great
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  diversity of screwed tape letters is probably the first Lewis book that I ever engaged with and
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  it was as a teenager you know early teenager and that was yeah that was something that that was
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  just really entertaining that's what really connected with movie was it was done in an entertaining
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  way that as a teenager that you kind of see as it seemed like it was subversive right you're reading
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  letters from devils and so that's just yeah just just the the conceit was I think quite kind of
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  hook me in but then of course as you're brought into that just the arguments that are made kind of
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  the absurdity or just kind of looking at things from the other end of the telescope right or
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  there's there's a way that you can define you can better define what something is by taking the
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  counter argument and yeah Lewis just did it in a really engaging way so that was one of my favourites
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  brother my first you know Lewis again exposure to and like engagement with Lewis and then
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  the great divorce is one that just like really captured my imagination in terms of his and
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  and so yeah so I don't know I guess that that wouldn't necessarily because we got so it's Lewis
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  because he is like you said he has these three sides to him it's sometimes it's hard to
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  firmly categorize one of his works as one of the three right so you have in screwed tape letters
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  it is a work of apologetics but it's also a work of imagination in a sense it is kind of it's a
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  work of fiction because he creates these characters who have an internal life and and there's
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  something that exists outside of them that they refer to right so he's kind of creating this you
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  have sketching out a hierarchy of of hell and what it's like to be an administrator or or
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  mid-manage mid-level management in hell that that is in a in of itself a sort of kind of
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  miniature hell within hell but that's yeah so there's so the work of imagination there there's
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  there's some bleeding over same with with the great divorce you have this really imaginative
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  exploration of right it's a it's a bus ride from from hell to heaven people from
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  from hell are you know every every so often they get a holiday visiting the land of heaven if
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  they want to stay the canned absolute standard I'm actually invited to but it's kind of looking at
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  what individuals are working through what they're ready to accept as the part they're willing to
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  change what they're not willing to change and and really does so in an incredibly imaginative way
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  that is reminiscent of Dante in in a lot of ways with a George McDonald as his virtual
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  character leading the main character that this the point of view character that the story is
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  is kind of a kind of presented in and you kind of see different people at different stages of
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  their kind of like spiritual life and development but yeah but but but but couched in these incredibly
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  imaginative vivid ways that aren't just straight project like mere Christianity I think I would
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  consider that one as more of a firmly contained traditional apologetic and that he's talking kind
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  of you know strictly he makes he makes frequent illustrations of his points and that's what I
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  think about what makes them so comprehendable to a broader audience so gotten so in terms of those
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  kind of more straightforward apologetics and gotten the doc collection of some of his essays is
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  really good letters to Malcolm was one that I really liked it's but again these are also turns out
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  these aren't actually letters that Lewis was writing to another person it's it's the topic is
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  prayer and so it turns out he wasn't actually writing these to a person named Malcolm but that
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  they were this is kind of a fictional conceit that you know writing letters to yeah so which is
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  good but so so then again you do you have kind of a fictive element that's kind of encroaching
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  off on that but only as a way to kind of explore the idea so he was Lewis is more concerned about
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  ideas and exploring and trying to get at an idea or sense of truth or meaning and he would tackle
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  those topics from whichever one of these lenses or set of tools that served him best at the time
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  and so yeah so apologetics is one of those three you kind of see him kind of blurring the line
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  between those but but certainly yeah so there's apologetics if you haven't engage with them good
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  place to start mere Christianity screw tape letters as well great divorce especially if you're
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  more familiar with this fiction and want to kind of step into him engaging with ideas of meaning
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  greater meaning in life that those are probably a few really good ones I think a really good little
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  reading scheme would be if you've read the last battle and sort of found that difficult read
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  the great divorce and put alongside it at least by Nigel the Tolkien word because it's very
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  difficult to write about heaven I mean how can we know you know it but they each have a different
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  interesting take and I've certainly found through the years some of the ideas fascinating about the
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  and they're like so see if there are straws on Plato for example the things being more real
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  which you can see in the pattern of what happens at the end of the last battle so I think they're
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  really interesting I think unlike with academia with the medieval scholarship I think in terms of
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  Christian apologetics see as Lewis is still holding his own people find worth in him
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  taking into account that he is a man of his generation writing in the middle of the 20th century so
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  he has certain attitudes and things which were prevalent then but he still has plenty of nuggets
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  of gold amongst everything else to be found so yeah well so 60 years on he's still relevant in the
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  world of apologetics okay so let's go to what we want to talk about most of this time which is him
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  as a writer of fantasy writer of literature I just should put in a hero note that in the
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  1920s he was really aspiring to be a poet that was what he wanted to be and that's how he saw
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  himself and he did publish poetry but it wasn't really until he started writing his fiction
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  but he came away from being and also ran in that field to actually being someone who's breaking
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  new ground or certainly yeah I think breaking new ground is a good way of putting it so
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  there's a lot to talk about we could have a whole podcast devoted to Narnia but let's think about
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  the things that aren't Narnia first so obviously we have the space trilogy which shouldn't really
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  be called the space trilogy because he called it so I'm just trying to find it on my desk here we are
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  so it's three books outer silent planet which is a trip to Mars or Melacandra
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  Parallandra which is a voyage to Venus and then it's the last one called the hideous strength
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  that hideous strength that's right which stays mainly on earth and that's a sort of strange mashup
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  of Arthurian themes and it kind of gets completely out of control of that book but the first two
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  I think are still readable and they are interesting for example that
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  CS Lewis is analyzing colonialism in space and sort of criticizing it because it's humans bringing
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  the evil to Mars there's like the invading colonial power and there's also in it some absolutely
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  beautiful descriptions of space but using the discarded image using the medieval
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  way of describing space there's a particular moment where the main character Ransom who's
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  basically hijacked or taken hostage by Professor Weston and his stooge because they think the people
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  of Mars the Melacandrons are wanting a human sacrifice so they kind of bring him along to throw
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  to the lion's equivalent but anyway he's in this spaceship and there's a moment where he
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  is lying in the light of space because space isn't dark of course because the sunlight is there
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  and there's a most wonderful description and how he turns the way of thinking of space as a dark
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  empty void into a place full of joy and full of praise it's just absolutely wonderful we're
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  reading it just for that passage alone what do you make of the space trilogy is that something that
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  you agree I mean yeah yeah no I really I really like it and it was actually my own kind of Lewis
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  experience no he describes George McDonald those kind of baptizing his imagination
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  through Fantasties was the book in particular that he'd kind of picked up at a
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  the bookseller stall um touching a train um but that's there's something in that
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  that isn't George McDonald the curty and back to the north way as well yeah both yeah yeah so
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  yeah exactly yeah so back to north wind yeah uh yeah the curty yes prince in the goblin that's
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  yeah same thing so Fantasties is also yeah it's my fault um uh so yeah so that I had something
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  similar it was it was actually Parallandra was um my first book of uh of Lewis's fiction that I
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  that I read so I started it wasn't actually with Narnie because I didn't read Narnia that wasn't one
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  of my childhood books that might my parents didn't get that for me um and I wasn't exposed to it
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  elsewhere so my actual first work of Lewis fiction uh if you don't count screw tape letters was
• 27:52
  Parallandra and it was actually Parallandra at the time I was a graduate student and didn't
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  and that felt I didn't have time for uh for fiction right that it was that I was you know solely
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  concerned about these you know ideas and kind of academic uh you know nonfiction that that's
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  where my head was and that that was what kind of felt most important um like that's what was
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  talked about most and so it was uh kind of bumping into Parallandra giving a chance reading it
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  that's what kind of really opened my eyes to uh the like beauty as well as the uh of fiction and the
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  way that uh fiction can explore questions of meaning that you just cannot do in uh a you know
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  academic uh you know uh nonfiction setting right there's a way of engaging with the imagination
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  that opens up questions of meaning and relevance um and applicability to your own life that just
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  isn't possible when you're kind of in in a different mode so yeah so I I I love it uh still do um
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  and yeah that one and of course that this uh Lewis even writing fiction kind of grew out of a
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  sort of conversation that Tolkien and Lewis had about kind of deploring the state of science
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  fiction literature and stuff like well why don't we do it uh flipping a coin possibly right that one
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  one of them took space travel one of them took time travel uh Lewis ended up with space travel
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  Tolkien with uh with time travel and he started writing something that was kind of going to explore
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  new manure uh in the opposite contemporary age look yeah so there there's it was unfinished um kind of
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  fizzled out but it was new manure centered time travel related um and that didn't any end up
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  going anywhere but Lewis's I think it had legs because he found ways to interact with uh
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  questions that he was considering in other areas of his study right so you definitely see this more
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  with Lewis is he's just bringing in absolutely everything that he's thinking about um talking about
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  engaging with reading there's nothing that's off off limits for Lewis right and that's what one of
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  the things that when we get to the fiction uh portion of uh of him specifically with uh chronicles of
• 30:09
  narnia that some issues people have with his knives his worlds aren't you know kind of as meticulously
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  constructed internally they're not as internally consistent um and self contained as Lewis or as
• 30:20
  Tolkien's middle earth but Lewis has a different mindset and different uh different approach and
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  different goal and that's his way of thinking is like everything is grist for the male right and
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  that he's he's bringing in all of these different things in each of these you know in the academic
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  he can reference works of fiction works of poetry um in the apologetics he's doing the same thing um
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  and exploring a apologetic arguments in some of his academic writings and in his uh fiction um so
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  yeah so so I think that that's what what the space trilogy does is allows it gives this broad canvas
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  with certain constraints certain genre constraints uh for him to explore the same sorts of ideas
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  of meaning of uh right so what is it what does it mean to be a human what does it mean uh to
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  to engage with or consider or devote yourself to something that's larger than yourself um you see
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  that in parallel and specifically they're kind of the beginning of of of human consciousness human
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  reasoning um kind of exploring the story of the fall the biblical fall in Genesis um so that's yeah
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  that's still entertaining entertaining engaging um super imaginative just the writing the description the
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  lush description of the kind of parallelandron landscape is just like that's what drew me and was just
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  the vividness of his prose um and just like how it just kind of so that when I say like that
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  ties my imagination it's really kind of like set my imagination on fire it was really a watery uh
• 31:53
  calm it was more of a what like this this he he's not only activating my imagination and just kind
• 31:59
  of putting images like into my head like forcing these images into my head but as he's doing so he's
• 32:05
  also raising these questions and having these uh really important conversations that I feel like
• 32:10
  I am kind of a part of by virtue of the fact that I'm immersing myself in this world so yeah and so
• 32:17
  yeah space trilogy a long way of saying yes I do like the space trilogy and I recommend it um
• 32:23
  yeah but like you said the first two are easier so like the first one is more I think more
• 32:27
  out of the silent planet is more of a uh straightforward uh kind of science more more in the
• 32:32
  traditional science fiction genre where you have different species of alien races and a human
• 32:39
  trying to make sense of that world um uh and figure out what's happening in the uh a world that
• 32:45
  has completely different sense a way of doing things and interacting with different species and
• 32:49
  have its different assumptions about society um but that had yet strengthened this also
• 32:54
  it is a much farther different it's kind of we have a continue on this other
• 32:59
  science planet's more traditional science fiction parallelander is still science fiction but
• 33:03
  it almost kind of borders on fantasy it's more kind of closer to uh till we have faces um kind of
• 33:09
  more like adult oriented fantasy um like the exploring questions of meaning and then uh that
• 33:16
  hideous strength is where they were I think he he is influenced most by Charles Williams uh so he
• 33:22
  gets closer on the on the uh the cheese board uh to uh Charles Williams is is definitely there
• 33:28
  where you're looking at like archetypes and you do have him engaging with medieval ideas of the
• 33:34
  cosmos there um with kind of the spiritual you know the different deities or spirits that are
• 33:40
  attached to the different planets that end up kind of coming down and being part of what's
• 33:44
  happening on earth so discarded image has intersections with uh I think with with the space trilogy
• 33:51
  and a couple lose a couple different places there so yeah space trilogy wonderful uh especially the
• 33:56
  first two accessible and if you want to kind of see Lewis working his kind of imagination in a
• 34:03
  slightly different way if you like Narnia uh this is one to try out um and probably start
• 34:08
  out without a sound planet if you like that then keep going. So I think one of the connective
• 34:15
  tissues really between Lewis's desire to be a poet and his fiction writing is his ability to
• 34:24
  call up the most impressive imagery um and I think this is really the power of the Narnia stories
• 34:34
  because when I think about the Narnia stories which I read one of the first books I remember reading
• 34:39
  on my own as a child is I have really vivid pictures of what happens in the stories in my head
• 34:46
  really really vivid the taste of Turkish delight the the beavers um warm kitchen with the the fried
• 34:56
  fish supper uh father christmas on his sledge uh aslam being like playing with the thunderstorm
• 35:03
  I mean these things which they're all from line which in the wardrobe which I think is the one
• 35:07
  that affected me the most but there is something about being a poet in that and it also connects to
• 35:14
  how Lewis himself said the stories came to him he said it came through an image of a form
• 35:19
  carrying parcels in the snow which of course is that the you know Lewis uh Lucy meeting Mr
• 35:26
  Tomluss by the lamppost uh and the lamppost was in that image as well so he had he wrote to explain
• 35:31
  that image to himself and when you actually go back as an adult having perhaps read it as a child
• 35:38
  and come back to it you discover that the narrative of the Narnia stories is very brief and very
• 35:47
  fast paced whole battles happened in a blink of an eye but I don't remember that from the experience
• 35:54
  of reading it's a very interesting um if you're really fascinated watch what your brain is doing
• 35:59
  when you're reading them because it seems as though there's a very epic scale story unraveling in
• 36:04
  my mind because he's just flicking the right associations in my brain to fill out the rest of
• 36:11
  everything and I think this comes down to the idea of him being a bit slapped dash so whereas
• 36:16
  Tolkien will provide you with all the details at great length so that you can immerse yourself in it
• 36:22
  I think with the s Lewis it's a bit more of a uh a dash he's he's he's like a a cook who will
• 36:32
  be in a kitchen making up a dish and sort of pull things off the shelf and throw them together
• 36:36
  and create something whereas Tolkien's much more planting a garden letting it grow slowly and
• 36:42
  you know you have to go through a long process with him and it actually the each of those
• 36:46
  approaches have their pleasures so that I think does link back to his cs Lewis as the poet
• 36:54
  taking because poetry obviously has a sparser smaller frame and the power of the image is
• 37:02
  a really important skill in poetry so yeah that's like that's how for me the nine-year series work
• 37:09
  series of interlinked imagery which I cannot shake how about you that's great that's a great
• 37:16
  explanation uh yeah this is and I have a slightly different uh you guys experience with relationship
• 37:21
  with Lewis because of my kind of coming to his uh fictional works uh as an adult um but yeah it's
• 37:29
  yeah the imagination once I because I'd I'd actually read and engaged with uh that way his apologetics
• 37:35
  first then seeing kind of how that influence and how he's you're exploring the same sorts of questions
• 37:40
  but in doing so in like a really entertaining engaging way so I think yeah it's it's it's it's
• 37:45
  entered it is entertaining but you know a key you know mentions that you know the the necessity
• 37:51
  sometimes of stealing past those watchful dragons that might prevent us from asking these questions
• 37:58
  that in in due by by creating a world that is I think satisfying by itself that's entertaining
• 38:06
  imaginative that captures like you're saying captures people's imaginations um it it opens you up
• 38:12
  to different possibilities that's what that's what fiction does right um and well I think one of
• 38:18
  the things that he does really well is kind of exploring how we can look at the world in in different
• 38:24
  ways by presenting something that's completely fabricated um and you know he he he he mentions this
• 38:30
  in an experiment I think this is an experiment in criticism uh for he's he's does you know the he
• 38:36
  wishes that he could see with a thousand eyes right if he could if he could have a dog he would
• 38:41
  love to read a book written by a dog from the dog's perspective uh explaining what it's like to
• 38:48
  see the world through smell uh what is the dog like what they're just they're they're fundamental
• 38:53
  experience of reality he want he wanted to try to understand everything from from from different
• 39:00
  perspectives and I think what Narnia does is kind of gives gives us as readers that gift of making
• 39:07
  the world uh and the ways that we're engaging with the world helping us to see those through new eyes
• 39:13
  through fresh eyes which is what poet which is what poetry does I think you're yeah you're you're
• 39:18
  absolutely right to kind of look at Lewis kind of beginning life hoping to be a poet and working
• 39:23
  towards that and seeing how that has affected uh you know his his writing and uh the way that he
• 39:29
  approached uh storytelling really so yeah absolutely great great great point Julia I love that
• 39:34
  I think we also should do a shout out to the um he was very fortunate and he's illustrated
• 39:38
  with Pauline Baines again part of my childhood memories her drawings which are just so gorgeous um
• 39:48
  and then I can summon them up really clearly in my head even a little vignettes of like the
• 39:54
  beaver beckoning and the robin in the trees so her style fits the clarity of his prose in a lovely
• 40:01
  way it's it's a very good match up there so okay let's go to some of the difficult questions
• 40:08
  that we need to put to see us Lewis 60 years on let's I let you take is he racist and I'll do
• 40:15
  is he misogynistic just the kind of you know okay so over to you in what way do we understand his
• 40:22
  attitudes to race yeah and this is where you see Lewis really as a you know a person of his time
• 40:32
  and ideas understanding so like culturally um you're seeing him you you do see
• 40:37
  it's like I think similarities uh sometimes in the way that Tolkien presents other people so anytime
• 40:45
  you're presenting people as dark skinned and as foreign and as kind of threatening or mysterious
• 40:52
  in some way those are kind of playing into racist uh you know racist ideas racist tropes um
• 40:59
  that uh that were in circulation uh kind of in an unexamined that's certainly in an unexamined
• 41:05
  way uh in that time so with the sort of person yeah so it was what was he a racist if you yeah
• 41:12
  so it depends on how you define the term if you define the term as somebody who is you know like
• 41:17
  actively trying to uh you know persecute uh and uh maintain some sort of privilege over
• 41:26
  people of other races was he actively trying to do that no but a lot of like as you know racism
• 41:32
  as we understand it today um isn't just actively what you're doing trying to put down uh but it
• 41:40
  it can it can manifest itself in more seemingly benign ways in yeah again like how we describe
• 41:48
  other people and the place that we afford them in our conversations and in our literature um so
• 41:55
  you definitely like the horse and his boy uh that book is engaged with racist ideas right about
• 42:03
  it's kind of depicting this culture of people who are darker skinned uh it's definitely pulling on
• 42:08
  kind of like uh you know autumn and empire uh kind of society is kind of the starting point for
• 42:15
  what he's looking at um but at the same time so you don't see but it's not he he doesn't he isn't
• 42:20
  creating the society and just for the purpose of making it the villain right because as you see
• 42:27
  in uh in the last battle you have the calamans um some of them right Emmett uh who is this
• 42:34
  character who is then praised and kind of held up as uh more honorable than Narnian's uh in some
• 42:42
  ways because his search for truth was what would define him not his cultural context so
• 42:50
  so you do see so it's not all um you know caricatures um and racist tropes you do see I think because
• 42:57
  Lewis was so kind of expansive um that he was able to perhaps unknowingly or unconsciously
• 43:06
  kind of break through some of those that that kind of those racist assumptions and depictions
• 43:11
  that you see uh in other literature you see kind of like glimmers of the Lewis the seeker right and
• 43:17
  Lewis um the empathizer who's trying to understand things from the inside um I think you definitely
• 43:23
  do see glimpses of that but again because it wasn't something that he and others around him really
• 43:29
  recognized as being some of they were actively doing certainly engaged with that um and and
• 43:36
  perpetuated harmful ideas about uh other other cultures kind of like non European non non white
• 43:43
  non English speaking uh culture so he definitely did so um and so does that mean that we should throw
• 43:49
  his writings away of those writings that engage with that those ideas or do perpetuate those ideas
• 43:55
  um do we throw those away I don't think that that's I don't think that that's helpful uh I think
• 43:58
  is recognizing it and being aware of what it's doing and making sure that you're not doing that
• 44:02
  yourself and how you're using it um but there's a lot that you can learn from and see as well as
• 44:08
  make sure that you don't do make the same sort of mistakes don't slip into the same sort of
• 44:11
  unexamined assumptions uh about other races um other cultures uh as you're creating your own worlds
• 44:19
  yeah I think there's definitely um a sort of puritanical streak in our in our modern
• 44:24
  folk who look for the moat in the brother's eye and ignore the beam in our own because we don't
• 44:29
  know what our own prejudice will look like to our children and our children's children
• 44:33
  so I think you're right to say let's contextualize him within that context he's actually trying
• 44:39
  to be progressive oddly right so yeah there is actually a very dramatic thing that Emmett says
• 44:46
  um who's the calamine who is through the stable door in the last battle he says as Van says to him
• 44:53
  what you did in service to Tash you did in service to me so in terms of looking at this sort of
• 44:59
  Christian theology theology this is quite radical and there will be people um more conservative
• 45:05
  Christians who will find that are difficult and would criticize him for saying that so
• 45:12
  I think we should allow him to be complex and not perfect but interesting
• 45:18
  uh and if and if you know I don't think he's gone as far that it needs to be
• 45:24
  reedited you know like they're doing with some people I think well writing if you if you've got
• 45:31
  a view on this but I feel that he he he is of his time but yeah I don't see him as racist I see him
• 45:41
  as prejudiced in that we are all prejudging because our own moment in history gives us a set of ideas
• 45:49
  it's quite hard to break free from anyway so I'm going to take on the misogynistic now
• 45:55
  this largely is around the fact that the sibling relationship particularly in line with which
• 46:03
  in the wardrobe boys get to fight battles the girls get to sort of heal things and shoot arrows
• 46:09
  for a distance you know that kind of thing um but more particularly there are two things which
• 46:18
  Philip Pullman gets very upset about one is an insult to um girls with little fat legs
• 46:24
  I was a girl truly with little fat legs and I never picked that up on that so I'm not sure where he's
• 46:28
  getting wary hated about that but also the fate of Susan um which I think is something that
• 46:35
  needs to be rectified but remember at the last battle we don't actually know what happens to
• 46:42
  Susan she doesn't make it there because in his theology not everyone's going to be there
• 46:47
  doesn't mean she won't later um because we don't know what final judgment is on anybody
• 46:54
  so I think that he is again of his time has a few unfortunate
• 47:00
  phrases and attitudes that come in but I don't think he is in his novels misogynistic I think he
• 47:07
  could be in his real life at times he could yeah I don't think he was always wonderful with
• 47:13
  every every female student he ever met but I think in his books he actually gives us some very
• 47:20
  interesting strong female heroine so Lucy is the beloved of Aslan and she's particularly strong
• 47:28
  in Prince Caspian where she is the one who says no I can see this and she makes everyone else
• 47:34
  follow her or tries to make them follow her and that's really that's a real strength stronger than
• 47:39
  wielding a sword and then of course you've got Jill and Polly are also they do make the story they
• 47:50
  are equal participants with Diggory for Polly and Eustace for Jill so they're definitely not the sort
• 47:59
  of damsel in distress they're part of making the story coming up with solutions having their flaws
• 48:06
  but I think there's one thing in particular which I think is quite wise about the way he writes about
• 48:13
  girls and that's in the dawn treader which goes pushes back against this girls with fat legs thing
• 48:20
  um which is when Lucy looks into the book in the House of the Magician and one with the
• 48:27
  duffle pugs outside the House you can see there's a page where she um there's a lesson there
• 48:34
  about listening to slander which would be very good for social media and there's also a lesson
• 48:38
  about wanting to be beautiful and I think there's quite a lot of wisdom in how he phrases that
• 48:44
  and you see that Lucy too isn't perfect because there's an element of making Lucy just so sweet
• 48:49
  and innocent and wonderful there we see Lucy has her weaknesses her jealous is just in the same
• 48:56
  way as Eustace's flawed and Edmund is flawed and I think that yeah I don't see the misogyny in that
• 49:04
  I see as an interesting way of looking at what upsets you as a child and what and what
• 49:11
  jealous is in the school room context you might fall into so yeah he's not perfect but he's also
• 49:19
  pretty good so I also want to put down at this point that if we stop there at Narnia then it's a
• 49:31
  mixed bag what a lot of people haven't read and must read is till we have faces which is probably
• 49:41
  the best of his novels certainly the best of his adult novels which he wrote after he knew
• 49:47
  Joy Davidman so there is definitely a learning curve about adult women going on and she
• 49:54
  had quite a lot of influence on this story if you want to know what till we have faces about it's a
• 49:59
  retelling of the cupid and psyche myth from the point of view of psyche's sister and there's quite a
• 50:07
  few books today in this genre the retelling of Greek myths so you could put it alongside things like
• 50:13
  Pat Barker's Silence of the Girls or Madeline Hunters books the sort of Achilles or Cersei but
• 50:20
  other obviously in Tazby's own contemporary as you've got people like Robert Graves writing
• 50:25
  retellings of I thought of Greek and Roman stories and Rosary Sutcliffe so he's in that tradition
• 50:32
  it's very different from the space trilogy from Narnia and it is wonderful complex difficult
• 50:41
  absorbing a really strong female character she is just fascinating I'd love to see an adaptation
• 50:52
  of this I think it's an absolutely underrated under read book and so if you want to say where is
• 50:59
  C.S. Lewis at 60 he is underrated because no one's reading this book which would cap off his other
• 51:07
  novels I think is saying oh look what he did towards end of his life um so what do you have you
• 51:13
  got into the brilliance of till we have faces Jacob or is it yes yes yes don't I have I second
• 51:20
  everything that you said yeah it is certainly yeah it's it is it is more yeah it's
• 51:26
  is then this is if you liked Narnia as a child and you would like something that maybe speaks
• 51:33
  a little bit more to complexities this like you said yeah this is presents some very complex
• 51:40
  characters this you see the same sorts of things that you see him doing elsewhere in his fiction
• 51:46
  namely bringing in kind of his academic experience the questions he's asking the text that he's
• 51:53
  dealing with he's bringing those all in here right so you have you know essentially an explanation
• 51:59
  depiction from the inside of stoicism you have these these myths these mythic ideas so what
• 52:05
  does what would it look like to actually live and inside one of these stories inside this culture
• 52:10
  and I think this is kind of you have similarities between what Tolkien is able to do in talking
• 52:17
  about exploring kind of concepts religious concepts without having to deal with the religious
• 52:24
  structure itself that the Tolkien does in middle earth right so this is kind of a free
• 52:28
  middle earth there's a pre-Christian culture right so he can he can engage with these ideas where he
• 52:34
  doesn't have to you know they don't have the terms for these particular contemporary religious ideas
• 52:41
  but you see them kind of baked in and explored in different ways in a pre-Christian
• 52:48
  context same thing you have here so this is kind of a like narnia for grown-ups like a pre-Christian
• 52:56
  narnia for grown-ups in some way but it's not dealing with but it's not really I think primarily
• 53:00
  concerned about religion per se it's this idea of love right what is love and of course
• 53:09
  that has you know religious connotations and intersections but in and of itself it's exploring
• 53:14
  you know what what does what is love how can love go wrong how can we blind ourselves to the love
• 53:21
  of others how can we get in the way of between other people experiencing love between two other
• 53:29
  people or from our between ourselves and that other person so really yeah it's like you you
• 53:34
  you've joked about a media you know the joe the Lucy learning a lesson about gossip and you know
• 53:42
  kind of speaking ill of other people this really I think till we have faces is probably one of the
• 53:48
  most relevant I think stories that Lucy's done for our time where people are you know trying to
• 53:57
  understand their own identities how they interact with people of other identities yes people's
• 54:02
  lived experiences differences between others but then trying to find some sort of thread that can
• 54:07
  bring people together till we have faces is is is an is an incredible work yeah the the looks at
• 54:15
  the highest lows of love and how we perceive how other people experience love and belonging
• 54:22
  and and meaning so yeah again the second year endorsement and if you haven't read till we have
• 54:28
  faces please please please pick it up read it uh it will yeah it's it's one of those ones that
• 54:35
  sticks that sticks with you like the feeling if you said you know that as from as a child read
• 54:40
  these images of Narnia still kind of stick with you some of the images from till we have faces still
• 54:48
  stick with me but more than that just kind of the feeling that I had as I was reading it just kind of
• 54:52
  like the tone of it just just kind of like haunts me consistently so yeah it's it's it's it's good it
• 55:01
  will echo in your head and in your heart and yeah I appreciate you contextualize this this is
• 55:08
  Lewis after he's you know his has been married so you can like speak where is before you know
• 55:14
  four loves I don't believe that was I think do you know when four loves was was written
• 55:19
  now I don't three three Davidson it's that's an academic kind of passion I so comparing the two I
• 55:27
  wouldn't be surprised if he wrote the four loves before he was married because it's this very you
• 55:32
  know kind of like academic dissection you know kind of a taxonomy of love and the different
• 55:37
  degrees of love and so he's looking kind of intellectually at what love is um and there's some
• 55:44
  valuable things there and I think it's it's a it's a brilliant read I highly recommend for loves
• 55:47
  but till we have faces is like what does love feel like and what are the what's the messiness of love
• 55:54
  like um and it's important to say it's it's not um love sort of like a romantic love
• 56:03
  is that a romance yes it's largely about all the other kinds of love
• 56:08
  yes yeah I think that's important yeah so if we haven't said that so if let me just know
• 56:11
  about Julia faces it's not a romance novel that's so isn't a a love story it's this isn't kind of a
• 56:20
  girl me its guy misunderstanding and they're reunite and right yes it's not it's not a it's not a
• 56:26
  modest ripper it's not like not even it's it's it's it's it's it's just looking at yes like the idea
• 56:33
  of love in all of its facets it includes all of the different terms that you know kind of like
• 56:39
  collegial love familial love some you know erotic love it does touch on that but that is not in
• 56:48
  any way shape or form the the center of what the question is asking it's looking at like love as
• 56:54
  a whole and it's in the different faces that love has yeah that's why the the main character
• 57:01
  the heroine is so radical because he's thought of a main woman who is well she'd be quite at home
• 57:08
  in some of the world of Game of Thrones to be honest she has a harsh side but yeah so fascinating
• 57:14
  book and I think just to put alongside that as to cap off our Lewis at 60 since his death um
• 57:22
  there is also new scholarship about him particularly ushered in by Michael wards planet Narnia
• 57:29
  which suggests that Lewis's Narnia stories were much more complicated and clever than we ever
• 57:35
  thought so people I think are learning to look at Lewis as the writer of ideas and seeing that
• 57:45
  this simplicity does mask get more complexity than we imagined which is great I think he will
• 57:52
  still put up the backs of those who aren't in um sympathy with his Christian faith because he's
• 57:57
  very forthright about that not everybody but he will put some people's backs up um and I think he
• 58:05
  would expect that because as I said he is the camman bear he wasn't expecting to go well with every
• 58:11
  you know paired with every wine he was expecting to meet with some pushback and that's how he
• 58:16
  liked to argue and perhaps that's the best legacy for him is that people are still arguing about him
• 58:23
  60 years on so um we always end up with a final moment where we think where in all the world is the
• 58:32
  best place for something let's think about where in all the world is the best place to have an identity
• 58:41
  which means you are going to become like Aslan the god or something like that or personify a god
• 58:53
  do you have an idea where it would be good place to pop up and because we haven't really talked
• 58:57
  about the level of gods there's lots of them in gods and goddesses I'm going to give you one
• 59:06
  because you start with which is I do think that the idea of fantasy reimagining identity reimagining
• 59:16
  gods which is sort of central to Lewis's work I actually very keen on the Rick Reid and Percy Jackson
• 59:24
  universe which for me was a brilliant entry into this what would Greek gods be like in the present day
• 59:35
  the reimagining which obviously he'd um Lewis did so well with Aslan as a god in a animal world
• 59:42
  so I would pick Percy Jackson for me that's the best place to come back as well
• 59:50
  okay yeah so that's yeah I was when you were when you asked the question I was actually thinking
• 59:54
  like yes Percy Percy Jackson series like it would be fascinating to have one of those novels not
• 59:59
  written from the perspective of Percy Jackson or another youth but from one of the gods
• 1:00:04
  right what they like how they are understanding the world and across the sweep of time so I guess
• 1:00:11
  what I'll say in those lives I don't want to say it's the best but probably the most interesting
• 1:00:18
  world would be Neil Gaiman's American gods yes like we see right so that like what that explores
• 1:00:26
  the idea of these ideas kind of like mythic at court ideas what does belief in view how the power
• 1:00:33
  of belief and what yeah what is it like to be an idea an ideal of something and how that kind of
• 1:00:39
  fluctuates over the ages and then in some cases you know declines people believing in following
• 1:00:48
  yes yes humoring you yeah so so American gods for me I think is yeah one of the one of the best
• 1:00:56
  explorations of the idea again for in some cases you get like from the inside what does it feel
• 1:01:02
  like to be a god who's being neglected yeah I'm kind of now wishing I said Brandon
• 1:01:09
  as well there's so many really interesting modern treatments yes fantasy anyway we got to draw
• 1:01:16
  we got to draw a line there so thank you so much Jacob for joining me to talk about CS Lewis
• 1:01:21
  60 years on Prince from his death thank you very much
• 1:01:30
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