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The Discarded Image and the Key to Narnia · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to MythMakers. MythMakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creatives brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding and
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  today I am joined by Jacob Renaker, who many of you who listen to this podcast will
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  know is a frequent conversation partner for me as we discuss all things fantasy. And
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  today we thought we would actually take a bit of a dig back into the history of CS Lewis.
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  In particular we would look at the connected topic of his work, the discarded image,
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  planet Narnia and the Narnia series. So bear with us. If that doesn't mean anything
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  to you then hold on because it's going to be a revelation. And for those of you who
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  already have an inkling about this topic, hopefully you will enjoy the conversation
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  that we are about to have. So Jacob, welcome. Do you want to kick off by saying what this
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  is the discarded image? What do we mean when I say CS Lewis and the discarded image?
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  Right, so discarded image is essentially a re-eification of his set of lectures that
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  he provided that he gave at university about the medieval cosmos, the model of the medieval
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  cosmos. And so when he says the discarded image, it's the kind of mental picture, the imaginative
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  framework that the medieval authors that he was a specialist in had in mind when they
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  were discussing everything, the world around them, theology, nature, sciences, everything
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  is kind of undergirded by this kind of imaginative image. And it's this image that in modernity
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  that he says that we have discarded set aside. And so his attempt here is to kind of rehabilitate
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  this image to help to introduce it to show modern audience, modern readers what this would
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  have looked like and felt like to experience for a medieval and the value that it still holds
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  to people today. Yeah, so you have to imagine that CS Lewis gave this first as a series of lectures,
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  as Jacob said. He was faced with rows upon rows of students who were pitching up at Oxford
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  and then Cambridge who had come with a modern mindset of science. Things have been set out into
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  space. They knew how big the universe was or had an inkling of it anyway. I think it's got
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  bigger sense. And he felt there was a need to give them a guide to how people before the modern
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  times thought because so much was being missed when students were reading medieval literature.
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  And right at the end of his life, he compiled these lectures into a book called The Discarded
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  Image rather poignantly the prologue is written in 1962 and the book is published in 1964 and 1963,
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  the intervening year is the year in which he dies. So it's very much something that comes out right
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  at the end of his career. Okay, so that was the purpose of this book. Just so you can sort of
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  feel what it's like to read. It is a scholarly book and there are large chapters on things like
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  the Latin writers that the Medievals were reading who aren't on any present day bestseller list.
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  People were like plot in us. But we see us who I think is probably, I certainly knew a bit more about
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  him. And then there was sort of the old faves like Aristotle and others description of the Greek
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  writers like Plato and so on. So he does the Greeks, he does the latins and tries to show the
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  continuity between those writers and the Medievals who then picked them up in the period which he
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  was teaching in. So if you skip those chapters, the nub of the argument comes in the beginning
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  material and the epilogue at the end. So that's what we're going to be concentrating on. So Jacob,
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  do you want to have a stab at describing what the Medieval universe was like?
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  Yeah, this is fascinating. It took Lewis a number of different lectures so I don't think I can do
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  it in any shorter of a time than he didn't. But okay, so just kind of the 20,000 to 30,000
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  foot view is a kind of intricately woven, carefully planned, interconnecting
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  a set of heavenly bodies, earthly bodies, all governed by God essentially. But with layers,
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  levels that all relate to each other in different ways, but that are all firmly interconnected and
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  like I said, interwoven. And it's organized, you can label everything, everything has its proper
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  placed, everything makes sense. It's a given that the things are going to make sense. There's
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  a reason and rationale for it all. And the Medieval mind, as Lewis says, enjoyed this sort of
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  categorization and this sort of complexity. And just contemplating this model was something
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  that authors, they really kind of sparked them and drove them. So they didn't see
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  repetition of the model trying to re-explain it as being something that would be dull to them,
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  rather it was something that they thought that they looked upon with a sense of joy and delight.
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  And that if they could recapitulate this model that could explore it, they could kind of
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  detail the interconnection between these different parts, that that was something that delighted
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  them and presumably delighted their audience. At the reason why Lewis says that they spoke about
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  this model so much was because they enjoyed it so much and that that might be a difference. It
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  wasn't a sense for a drive for novelty. Rather, it was a sense of comfort, not just comfort,
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  but really deep appreciation for respect for and an enlivening by these principles that stood
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  as fundamental. So you can see everything, everything is explainable and you can enjoy it again
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  and there's always more to kind of see and understand, but it's all there, it's all laid out,
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  you just have to remember it. I think one of the, it's some kind of instinctive
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  version of the universe. So if you imagine us standing outside looking up at the skies,
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  this model of the universe which goes back to the Greeks and properly before that starts with
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  the idea of the earth is not exactly at the centre, but it's at the bottom. And then above that
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  are the spheres and the spheres are all the seven planets and the moon is counted as a planet
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  in their separate spheres. So you've got the moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Jupiter, not the very outer
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  layer planets like Uranus, because they weren't yet discovered. So you've got seven of them
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  sort of stacked up and then beyond that you've got the fixed stars and beyond that you've got
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  the sort of prime mover, because they understood that for in order for the spheres to be revolving,
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  there had to be something to set them in motion. The other thing was that it was felt that the,
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  this was like a eternal universe. They didn't have a sense of it being created.
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  That was the Greek version of it. Of course, by the time you get to the medieval version,
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  they've got the idea of the Christian worldview of there being a creation moment.
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  So there were some dissonance between what Christianity had entered into the model
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  and what the Greek scientists had. Anyway, so that we don't need to go into the minute detail,
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  but there are some absolutely brilliant descriptions. This is why I was so excited to talk to Jacob
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  about it because he'd also been reading it. There's some fantastic descriptions of what it's
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  like to be a medieval man person looking up at the universe. I've just got a couple here I want
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  to read you. So, hence to look out on the night sky with modern eyes is like looking out over a sea
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  that fades away into mist or looking about one in a trackless forest, trees forever and no horizon.
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  To look up the towering medieval universe is much more like looking at a great building.
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  The space of modern astronomy may arouse terror or bewilderment or vague reverie.
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  The spheres of the old present us with an object in which the mind can rest,
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  overwhelming in its greatness but satisfying in its harmony.
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  That is the sense in which our universe is romantic and theirs was classical.
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  So that goes what you were saying, Jacob, that they had this model which they celebrated and found
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  they wanted to illustrate and add to and explore because it was like being in a vast wonderful
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  medieval cathedral. A known kind of understandable place in a sense as opposed to us now with the
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  proportions of the universe being so vast that we feel lost in a trackless forest as C. S. Lewis says
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  here. When you were reading this, did it help you do the adjustment, which is the aiming for,
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  which is to sort of feel a bit medieval as you were reading it?
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  Yeah, one of the things, yeah, these perspectives shift that he provides and he does it
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  three different times in discarded image. He asks the audience reader to, he says the best way
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  to get a sense for this is to actually go out in the night sky to spend half an hour just looking
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  up at the stars. Like you were mentioning Julia that it's really kind of this intuitive looking
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  up and really giving a feel for what it's like. So then you can start playing imaginatively.
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  Like what are these? Is it, you know, in the ancient Near Eastern Mediterranean view,
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  you have the sky as a dome and light as being either, you know, gems, jewels, or pinpricks that
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  are kind of showing through to something else beyond. And so if you sit with that, once you kind
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  of enter into that model and try to look at what that's like, it can be disorienting. In a way,
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  and that's what I think Lewis is trying to encourage disorientation or for him, it would be kind
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  of a reorientation that the world needed to understand that, yes, he's the term vertigeness,
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  right? He says the medieval model is vertigeness. If you look at it the right way, you're not actually
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  looking up, you're actually looking down, you're looking out into this, you know, the more real world.
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  And so to try to shift that perspective, that's, yeah, that's interesting. And yeah, and
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  there's, I've actually had, there was a point, actually, to your question, right? Have I tried
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  this, have I experienced that? I remember I had read out of the silent planet where you have kind
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  of a description, I know we'll move into this a little bit later, but he describes the space
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  versus the heavens, you know, talking, and he talks about this here in the discarded image,
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  that space is what we call what's outside of the world. And that is the opposite of what the
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  medieval mind would have described space as instead of empty, you know, vacuous, cold, dark.
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  The medieval mind looks at this as bright, full of song, light, warmth, and he illustrates this
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  in out of the silent planet at one point. And I remember I just read that I was at, I was at the
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  Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and was there and that is a great, great view of the city,
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  but it was a nearly, must have been nearly full moon, it was, it was enormous. And as I was,
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  was standing there, kind of just looking out at that, there's lots of people around, but I was
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  just captivated by the moon and it just seemed like after having read this, you know, Lewis's
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  description of what it felt like to be or experience space or imagine space, it was, for me, so there's
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  there's kind of a switch that flipped and the moon seemed to be like something that was living or
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  at least worthy of love and that wasn't at a distance, but it was close enough for me to see
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  and almost feel in a sense. So imaginatively, I felt like I could say I loved the moon in a way
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  that I wasn't able to say before because seeing it just as a hunk of rock that's orbiting
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  however many, you know, a million, you know, however many miles away from Earth and this is what
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  it's, you know, the dissertation, it is, it is a thing rather than it is an object, it is,
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  it is something to be reflected in upon and contemplated. That's really what Lewis is trying to do here
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  is to shift our view from just seeing things as things, thing, you know, a star, and this is
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  something, and we're going into how he illustrates this, but in his fiction, which Tolkien does in his
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  poem Myth of Appia as well, and you see some kind of interplay between what Lewis is doing here
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  and what Tolkien has seen kind of the conversations that they were having. He's trying to broaden our
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  view from from the kind of modern view of examining and, you know, applying taxonomy to different
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  items and saying, okay, I know what this is because these are the parts that make it up and this is
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  kind of how it functions than the laws of physics. Moving from that to a world that is moved
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  ultimately by love, and that's something that's, yeah, that I found incredibly moving and even
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  kind of like personally meaningful as I was kind of playing with those sort of experiments myself.
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  Yeah, and I think what I really appreciate about the discarded images, he's trying to
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  say, look, these weren't ignorant people, the medievals. They were very sophisticated in the way
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  they used this model. So he takes you through the thought experiment after having put us in a sense
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  at the bottom or in the centre of this, with this fear is going around us. He says they also understood
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  that we were outside the city wall, that God, the first mover, the ultimate, we are the furthest
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  away. So he suddenly flips the model and he said, this is what the medievals did, they were able to
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  hold this sophisticated image of being both in the centre and on the outside at the same time.
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  So this gets away from the rather tired cliche that there wasn't really science in medieval period
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  and they spent all their time debating whether or not angels danced on pinheads, you know,
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  that stuff. And says, actually, no, they knew it was a model. They knew it was the best guess that
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  they had at the time, but they were also able to do these interesting things with it to explore
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  their beliefs and the way they understood their beliefs by incorporating it into this classical
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  model that they inherited from the Greeks really. So let's move to the epilogue of the discarded
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  image because that gets really interesting because where he really confronts our modern age,
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  he's obviously writing a few decades before us now, but he was in a time when we have the
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  beginning of Einstein and special relativity, in general relativity, in quantum world. So he
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  is in a sort of innocence in a world of modern science and he goes on to point out some really
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  fascinating things about our current scientific models. So I like this in particular,
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  anything imaginable, even anything that can be manipulated by ordinary, that is non-mathematical
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  conceptions, far from being a further truth to which mathematics was the avenue is amid an
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  analogy, a concession to our weakness. So he's saying that science has reached a point now
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  where when mathematicians who are the ones who speak the language of science try and explain it,
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  they give us an analogy, but it's nowhere, it's the distance from what they're trying to
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  describe as vast. So take for something like the string theory, which you and I may have a
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  vague idea, well it's about strings of things, but that's not true, it's just a sort of something to
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  stand between us and the science, it's not actually access to what the scientists themselves are
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  discussing. We have to acknowledge that our understanding of science by analogy, we use models
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  that are flawed, we're not true, we're just using flaws, a flawed model which is a kind of
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  explanation. And so he sums this up by saying no model is a catalog of ultimate realities,
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  and none is mere fantasy, so there's some truth in all of them. Each reflects a prevalent
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  psychology of an age almost as much as it reflects the state of that age's knowledge.
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  And nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her. And then he has a
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  final image which I find really helpful, he says that our questions are like a stencil, it determines
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  how much of the total truth will appear and what pattern it will suggest. So if we go to science
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  or go to nature asking certain questions, we get back certain answers. I found this really
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  really thought provoking actually because I'm very interested in science and I do try and understand
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  science which is above my pay grade mathematically. And I do sort of rest on these analogies thinking
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  I'm understanding, but he's warning me that I'm kind of not, you know, so I mustn't look down
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  on the medievals because they were doing a, you know, damn fine job in their own terms with their
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  model. Yeah, this is, this is great. And what he says, yeah, and I, I, how he begins the
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  epilogue, the image there says, I have, I've made no serious effort to hide the fact that the old
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  model delights me as I believe it delighted our ancestors. Few constructions of the imagination
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  seem to have combined splendor, sobriety and coherence in the same degree. So it's appreciation for it.
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  It is possible that some readers have long been itching to remind me that it had a serious
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  defect. It was not true, right? So the great way with Kim traditional, you know,
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  Louisian kind of wit and humor, he's, he says like, I know this is not true, right? But I want to
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  to say that this does, even though it's not true in that sense that it accurately describes how
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  contemporary, you know, astrophysics understands the, the workings of the cosmos. It still holds a
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  kind of permanent value, imaginative value. And for him, he saw it as well as having a spiritual
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  or moral value in contemplating this model. And there should be held alongside other models,
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  right? And not not to, to be looked down upon as, you know, looking at history, the term that
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  Louis uses is exercising chronological snobbery to say, you know, kind of discarding
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  everything that happened before because history is kind of a one long line of progression
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  and that we are now, you know, in our knowledge, in our morals and our understanding that we are
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  far superior today than anyone that existed before. I'm trying to say that's not the appropriate
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  way to look at this. Each person, each age has its own kind of way of engaging with the world that
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  deserves to be taken seriously and held kind of in conversation, intention, not just intention with,
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  but I think he would say like in conversation with these other models and that it's in that
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  conversation of these different models that you're, you're arriving closer to what is ultimately
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  real and what is actually meaningful. So fortunately, we're not about to set off in a rocket ship,
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  so we don't need to have the, the right. We're using this something imaginatively and as an
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  inspiration, but if you're wanting to understand really hundreds and hundreds of years of literature,
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  it's a very good book just to give you a sort of, you know, primer on that and also it links
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  to the idea of the humours, which was the main kind of medical knowledge until very recently,
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  really, until we got germ theory and other things. And you probably heard of the sort of the,
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  the, you know, choleric temper and melancholy and all these things sanguine. These all comes from
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  the planets, their influence and how that affects our bodies because they were, the medics were
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  trying to explain why we get ill, why people were different from other people, why people went
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  into depression, all these things they look for explanations and they connect it to this model.
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  So if you want to understand how people understood character, it's a great book to read,
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  just to put that in your head. So when you read your Shakespeare plays, you know what's going on,
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  for example. Anyway, so let's move on from the discarded image to briefly look at
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  how Lewis played with this himself. He says right at the beginning,
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  he hopes to persuade the reader not only that this model of the universe is a supreme medieval
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  work of art, which I think you mentioned Jacob, but that it is in the sense the central work,
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  that which most particular works were embedded to which they constantly referred
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  from which they drew a great deal of their strength. So everything goes back to this all the time.
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  And recently, or in the last 10 years or so, scholarship about
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  CS Lewis has suggested that this is really true of his own fiction and his own writing.
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  And it's very much front and center in his poem The Planets, which in itself is like a little
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  primer to understand the seven heavens of the medieval imagination. But it also goes into his
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  and ransom trilogy, the one the science fiction trilogy set in space, and also the Narnian.
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  What's the word for a seven-part book? He calls it the Narniad, like the Narniad,
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  which I kind of like than the Narniad.
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  Okay, so I would just recommend reading the short poem, not that short, but the poem The Planets,
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  which is in the collected poems of CS Lewis, because it's going to be very key to the next
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  place we're going with this, which is Michael Ward. Now, Michael Ward is an academic who
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  lives some works in Oxford. I had dinner with him last week, so he's very much of a, I thought,
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  the scene is a delightful man, but he also happens to be the, the one the person who I'd say has
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  revolutionized the way we think about CS Lewis in our generation. And this was all because he was
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  sitting reading The Planets, The Poem, The Planets. So do you want to pick up the story there, Jacob,
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  and say what revelation came to Michael? Yeah, so he's reading that. He's doing work on Lewis,
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  and in reading, there's a passage from this poem about Jupiter that mentions,
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  in talking about the sense, the essence of Jupiter, that it's of the sense of winters ended
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  since forgiven. And so those two lines together, winter ended, since forgiven, or wrongs, or wrongs
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  forgiven, then that kind of immediately sparks his mind to make a connection between the line
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  to which in the wardrobe where you have, right, your always winter never Christmas, and then Edmund
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  and his kind of betrayal, and then Aslan's kind of making restitution for that and ultimately
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  forgiving him. So that seems to be kind of the, the impetus, the spark that kind of reframes
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  things for him. And so he starts looking, rereads, again, the poem itself, and then goes to,
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  to look at the different volumes within the Narniad, to see if there were, it was a corresponding,
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  so first within lines in which in the wardrobe, how much Jupiter imagery do we see there? And then
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  he finds, he demonstrates quite a bit that he finds there and says, well, if that is the case for
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  line which wardrobe, is it also true for these other planets? And there are seven planets
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  in essence here, and seven heavenly bodies, I should say, and then there's seven Narnia
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  novels, and there's been traditionally scholars have had a difficult time trying to
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  provide some sort of overarching, you know, schema for understanding, how do these fit together?
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  What is the organizing principle of these books? Is it just flap dash as Tolkien had described it,
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  right? Is this just Lewis just kind of in the dark firing off shots, grabbing pieces of mythology
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  from here and there, that Tolkien found to be inconsistent mythological systems? What is Lewis
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  doing? And scholars have tried a number of different ways, you know, mapping them onto the seven,
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  seven Catholic sacraments, mapping them onto different plays, a word, you can say that he tried
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  making connections between different Shakespearean plays, which he finds illusions too, but there
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  wasn't any satisfying overarching model for understanding why seven books, how do they actually
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  fit together? And so, yeah, so this poem and this reading through specifically Jupiter is what
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  kind of sends them off into this deep, deep, deep dive into Lewis's planetary imagination or
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  heavenly body, medieval imagination, and then looking at how those ideas might have been embodied
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  in the different books of the Narnia series. Yeah, I'm so probably, I mean, Michael is
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  putting it out there for us to challenge him. And I guess the one challenge would be the stencil
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  image that CS Lewis provides, that if we put the stencil of the planets on the books,
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  then we get the answers back we're looking for. Okay, but still I find it very enriching.
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  So that's an argument for going along with this argument. So, Jov Jupiter, Joviel happy rejoicing
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  the the greatest of the planets is the Narnia, the line the witch in the wardrobe.
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  But it is quite convincing, particularly the association with the silver chair and Luna, the moon,
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  madness, water, wateriness, enchantment, there's silver. There's all sorts of imagery there that
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  works well with the medieval understanding of Luna. You've got Mercury, Messenger,
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  Fleetfooted Messenger for the horse and his boy because the whole point of that story is to get
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  the message to Narnia that the Calamans are coming across the desert, but there are many other
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  aspects to this, languages, all sorts of things, cross-cultural aspects. Oh, Mars, Prince Caspian,
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  all about war, battles, single combat, fighting. It's, you can see what you start looking for it.
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  Yes, absolutely. That is the book about war. So, who have we got left? We got Venus.
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  Magicians left you as Venus, yeah. Now, that one I find less of a close fit.
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  Okay, I'm happy to go with it. I'm still convinced Michael. And then, of course, the last one is
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  Saturn, which is the last battle. Oh, no, I've missed out the sun. So, the sun one is the voyage of
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  the dawn treader, the sun imagery in that is and gold. Everyone remembers the bit in the water
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  where people turn into gold statues. I mean, there is lots of, yeah, I find that convincing. The
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  imagery on board the ship, it sort of picks up the solar theme. And then going back to Saturn,
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  the old man, the end of times of closing up the shop on Narnia, you know, it's the sort of the
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  aged one. Everything is in its last days in that story. So, yeah, I do find the theme
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  convincing and enriching. So, I'd read the books as a child, read them as an adult,
• 31:57
  read Michael's book, Planet Narnia, and then reread or listened again to the stories and found new
• 32:05
  depths, new possibilities of imagery coming through. So, for me, that's the point of reading a
• 32:12
  critic like this is you can suddenly see a richer theme by thinking, hmm, that's possible.
• 32:20
  So, are you totally sold on the theory or do you have reservations?
• 32:25
  Yeah, it's, I mean, it's not like to, like you said, going back to Lewis, that it's a model for
• 32:33
  understanding the Narnia books. I think you're absolutely agree that the word is produced
• 32:43
  enough evidence and ideas there to make a convincing argument that this was something that
• 32:49
  that could have been in Lewis's mind. And more importantly than whether or not this was actually
• 32:56
  what motivated it, it is a valuable lens through which you can see these books and that you can draw
• 33:01
  deeper appreciation for what Lewis is doing. So, at the very least, if it wasn't the governing
• 33:08
  principle of the Narnia books, it certainly seems to be something that was part of, as we discussed
• 33:15
  with the discarded image, this was something that was kind of fundamental to Lewis's thought and way
• 33:21
  of kind of toying with what the world is, how do things work together? He loved the medieval
• 33:27
  model and so it makes sense that he would, that that, even if it wasn't intentional, that that
• 33:34
  love for an engagement with that model would inevitably kind of bleed into what he's doing
• 33:41
  with his, with his fiction. And it seems to be doing it, he seems to be doing it. He's
• 33:47
  kind of explicitly doing that in the ransom or the cosmic trilogy. You definitely have the names
• 33:53
  of the planets, it's much more explicit, so you can see him doing it there. And so we know that
• 33:59
  he's capable of treating those sort of themes and wanted to engage with those ideas of heavenly
• 34:05
  bodies, transiting them into fiction, entering into a fictional world in which these planetary ideas
• 34:12
  and ideals were a reality and you were able to experience them or the characters and the story
• 34:18
  were able to experience them. So, so I think that that's a good argument for you to say like, yes,
• 34:22
  this is Lewis is capable of doing this. Is he doing that in some way here in the Narnia books? And
• 34:27
  it seems like it would be difficult to say that it wasn't in his mind or he was able to shut off
• 34:32
  that part of his mind while he was writing these books, but it does, it does certainly add some
• 34:37
  unique, I think, enriching perspective on the Narnia stories. And of course, there is a material
• 34:44
  at the end of the Dawn Tredder where they meet a retired star, Romandu. And dear old Eustace,
• 34:52
  one of my fav characters all the time, basically says, oh, you can't be a star, you know,
• 34:57
  stars are a big ball of burning gas. And his answer, Romandu's answer is, well, that's what a star
• 35:06
  is in your world. In this world, this is what stars are like. I'm a star. So,
• 35:15
  what what CS Lewis is doing is you're in a world of fantasy. So this can be the model of the universe,
• 35:23
  stars can be different. It can be the medieval version of some sort of wonderful angelic being
• 35:32
  a sort of demon of the sky is demon about not demonic, but the sort of presence in the skies
• 35:38
  who can be a retired star living on an island. Why not? You're in the world of fantasy and it's
• 35:46
  real within that world of fantasy. So I think, yes, there's plenty of evidence in there. So the
• 35:52
  the biggest problem is the one which Michael Ward does tackle, which is why didn't he tell us.
• 35:58
  So once he'd finished writing the nine year series, why didn't he leave a letter saying, hey,
• 36:04
  everybody, I've been super clever. Look how clever I've been. This isn't the answer to all those
• 36:09
  critics who told me I was being random. Tolkien, you should have paid more attention. You know,
• 36:13
  why didn't he do that? What do you think about Michael's answer, which is lately that CS Lewis
• 36:22
  likes to set the puzzles and he likes to have it sort of the surprise of unfolding it?
• 36:29
  Yeah. So I think if we're writing a novel about CS Lewis writing his stories,
• 36:37
  then I think that's compelling, right? That's like the Da Vinci code. This is the Narnia. And
• 36:42
  actually one of the popular versions that Ward did is called this the Narnia code, right? So
• 36:48
  this thrilling discovery that there's a secret key to reexamine these things that have been
• 36:52
  in plain sight all along and really is teaching about X, Y, or Z. So there's something that
• 36:59
  for us kind of like narratively as humans, we find that compelling. And this is a mystery to
• 37:06
  solve, but you're right. It's an argument from silence. And that's the hardest argument to make,
• 37:12
  right? That he, yeah, that that was a part that's got least convincing to me was that Lewis could
• 37:17
  be a secretive person. He kind of kept his his marry his marriage to joy, a secret for a year or
• 37:25
  so from a lot of his closest friends. And there are other things in his life that he didn't document
• 37:30
  in a surprise by joy and his autobiography that some who knew him felt were kind of glaring
• 37:35
  omissions. So yes, he was secretive of maybe just private about certain things. But again,
• 37:43
  yet to say the argument, I think that I find most compelling for the that word makes for Lewis's
• 37:52
  silence about his model or his his own kind of impetus for writing these these works of fiction
• 38:01
  is that again, going back to how Lewis was studying medieval literature. And so he uses you know,
• 38:07
  draws the comparison of the night's tale in in chalks or that Mars imagery kind of pervades it. And
• 38:15
  then it's explicitly stated that it happens, you know, things resolve on a Tuesday, which is the
• 38:22
  day of Mars in the calendar. And so so Lewis is pointing out and recognizing in discarded image that
• 38:30
  medievals are infusing their works, even imaginative works with this imagery. And so if he is trying
• 38:40
  you know, trying to emulate trying to get into the mode and model of of the medieval mind,
• 38:46
  then to have this happening himself that he would just presume that the medievals didn't say
• 38:52
  now I'm going to be writing about Jupiter. They just assumed that in the audience. So if he's
• 38:58
  taking the same approach and he calls it and reward, reward points us out that this kind of the
• 39:03
  capa element. It's this this element within fiction that is kind of the guiding theme or principle.
• 39:09
  It provides the atmosphere for a work of fiction. And that is something that kind of is the the
• 39:15
  air that you breathe in in that given work. And and so to if you're in the air, you don't I don't
• 39:24
  recognize them breathing air because I'm breathing it so much. And then to do so is to kind of ruin it
• 39:28
  to kind of take you out of that mode of suspension of belief or to draw attention to the fact
• 39:35
  that you are in a particular model that it is something that needs to be just kind of breathed
• 39:40
  and experienced. So that's I think that's probably the most compelling argument that word makes
• 39:49
  is not entirely like you said, Julia, it's not entirely convincing. You can't it's not ironclad.
• 39:55
  You can't say yes, he did this and that he was a secret person and that he meant for this and
• 39:59
  he's just giggling somewhere on the other side that finally somebody has discovered this.
• 40:06
  It's it's hard to say it's it's hard to say that why he would have mentioned it. He does have a
• 40:12
  word brings up a couple of different references that Lewis may have been alluding to this. But again,
• 40:19
  it's allusions and a lack of explicit calling out this this imagery. So it's it's difficult,
• 40:27
  but it doesn't invalidate the idea. I think the core thesis that the medieval model of the heavens
• 40:36
  and the spheres played a part in Lewis's construction of of the Narniabucks. Yeah, and also
• 40:44
  I wonder if we're looking at it a bit around the wrong way and that he's not setting a puzzle
• 40:47
  for academics is writing books for children. And just as when he thought about the ransom trilogy,
• 40:55
  he was thinking what fun can I have for adult readers of science fiction to familiarize themselves
• 41:01
  with the medieval model in certain aspects. He's thinking what fun can I have for children
• 41:11
  in bathing them in the atmosphere of a sort of a medieval concept of the heavens.
• 41:15
  I mean, there is another organizing principle, which is more obvious, which is the creation to
• 41:22
  revelation structure of the Narnia series. So you go from not in order, they were written, but
• 41:29
  in when you put them all together, you've got the sort of foundation stories of the creation of
• 41:34
  Narnia, then you've got the golden age period, which is line which in the wardrobe and a bit of
• 41:41
  Prince Caspian and Drawn treader, and then you've got the sort of undoing and the silver age and
• 41:48
  the end of Narnia. So there is another kind of more obvious organizing principle. And I think he
• 41:55
  was drawing on what he loved. We also are used to Easter eggs now, aren't we, in films and what
• 42:05
  have you. I put them in my own books that I will connect characters, which I'm not expecting
• 42:10
  anybody else to recognise. But I'm just doing it for my own leisure, because I see connections between
• 42:17
  characters. I might import them into another book, or there'll be these webs, which I'm
• 42:24
  creating. And I feel that you don't need to expose the workings in order to have the effect,
• 42:32
  the enjoyable effect of what that adds up to. So yeah, so actually move briefly to
• 42:40
  the ransom trilogy and this application of the discarded image. Do you want to explain a little
• 42:47
  bit about outer silent planet when this is most obvious that he's using the medieval model?
• 42:55
  For me, yeah, it was, it is a space travel book. And this is just to write a greater context.
• 43:03
  This was a book that he wrote as a result of a conversation that he had with
• 43:09
  J.R. Tolkien, right, that they were kind of lamenting the state of science fiction. They thought
• 43:14
  that the science fiction books weren't as good as they should be or could be. And so they decided
• 43:21
  one of them would tackle time travel, the other one would tackle space travel. Tolkien started
• 43:27
  working out some ideas, never finished anything because it ended up kind of getting
• 43:33
  subsumed into his larger project. And it was too difficult for him to kind of work into
• 43:38
  his larger legendarium, whereas Lewis went out and he was able to do, I think, as much easier
• 43:45
  for Lewis to do kind of one-off project that didn't have to be all part and connected to
• 43:50
  all larger whole. So Lewis is looking at space travel as a trope for science fiction.
• 44:00
  And so in the actual space travel portion of the book when ransom, the main character is kind of
• 44:07
  kidnapped and then taken in space to the planet Mars. The silent planet is
• 44:15
  or Mars has every planet has a different name. And he's providing it. It is truly interesting.
• 44:23
  I always taking medieval model and kind of recasting it as a science fiction premise of different
• 44:31
  worlds under different governing systems, kind of an interplanetary council. So for me, where I see
• 44:44
  it really where it kind of initiates you into the medieval mode is during the when ransom is taken
• 44:52
  from or to Mars, to Malacandra, the planet that is Mars essentially, but in this world,
• 45:02
  it's called Malacandra. But as ransom is kind of sitting looking out into space,
• 45:08
  he had this kind of extended beautiful kind of revelatory moment for the character.
• 45:15
  And he said, can I read just a little portion of that here to give that? So he says,
• 45:23
  a nightmare long engendered in the modern mind by the mythology that follows and the wake of
• 45:28
  science was falling off of him. So this is kind of like shedding this view that modern science
• 45:34
  has put on him. So he continues, he says, he had read of quote space at the back of his thinking
• 45:40
  for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black cold peculiarity, the utter deadness,
• 45:45
  which was supposed to separate the worlds. He had not known how much of it affected him until now,
• 45:51
  now that the very name space seemed a blasphemous libel for this imperial ocean of radiance in
• 45:58
  which they swam. He could not call it dead. He felt life pouring into him from it every moment.
• 46:04
  How indeed should it be otherwise since out of this ocean, the worlds and all their life had come.
• 46:09
  He thought it barren. He saw now that it was the womb of worlds who's blazing and innumerable
• 46:15
  offspring looked down nightly even upon earth with so many eyes and here with how many more. No,
• 46:22
  space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser. And so as it is again,
• 46:27
  illusion two medieval thinkers, older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens,
• 46:33
  the heavens which declared the glory. So this is another reference of Psalm 19. The happy
• 46:39
  climbs that he says where day never shuts his eye up in the broad fields of the sky.
• 46:46
  He quoted Milton's words to himself lovingly at this time and often. So you have him making a
• 46:53
  few different cross references to other works that he does. Of course, Lewis writing his preface
• 46:59
  to paradise law. So it's a Milton scholar to Psalm 19 there as a kind of biblical scholar
• 47:07
  as well as the medieval model there. So just kind of changing the view of space isn't
• 47:12
  quote space. That's the wrong way to look at this. There's another way of experiencing it.
• 47:17
  I just love the language that he uses there. Seeing the sky, the heavens as a kind of the womb
• 47:25
  of worlds, this nurturing, creating a creative environment. So that's kind of what gets you to kind
• 47:32
  of shift your way of thinking and then once you get actually get to the planet, he's exploring
• 47:38
  different races of creatures. But ultimately there's conflict there and there's conflict that
• 47:48
  the people from earth are bringing to that planet. And so that I didn't find in that much
• 47:54
  with out of the silent planet that this kind of Martian imagery, this Mars like that wasn't
• 48:01
  necessarily like permeating this whole book. But ultimately you have ransom interacting with the
• 48:09
  kind of intelligence or governing creature or you might say kind of angel like creature
• 48:17
  that kind of governs this planet. That's where you kind of get a sense for what the embodiment
• 48:24
  of Mars is. But for the rest of the book, it's largely kind of exploring ideas that he explores
• 48:31
  elsewhere in his Christian apologetic work in the more imaginative terms. But more than that,
• 48:40
  again, these medieval ideas are kind of at play in the background providing a kind of sound track
• 48:46
  for some of this as it continues. So the truth for the trilogy is the idea that earth is the
• 48:52
  silent planet, the fallen planet is another way of putting it. And each planet is sort of governed
• 49:00
  by a spirit, an angel, a genius of place. It's that sort of sense. And the one on earth is
• 49:07
  devilish and bad and corrupt. And so we are on objects of pity in the solar system.
• 49:16
  So when we move to Parallandra, which is actually a book, not that much plot, but amazing world
• 49:23
  building, Parallandra is Venus. So, unsurprisingly, the presiding genius of the places
• 49:32
  is is female, beautiful sort of presence. And again, you've got the idea of
• 49:42
  ransom comes as an emissary because he's learnt lessons from our silent planet. He's there he
• 49:48
  discovers to prevent a fall. He's been sent to stop the corruption from that he's experienced
• 49:55
  on earth reaching this planet as it sort of takes its first steps. So that's the sort of broad
• 50:02
  outline of that. It's amazing. The creation of on the evocation of a world where land masses are
• 50:11
  balanced on water is amazing, just reading it for that. It's very, very striking. And then
• 50:17
  finally, the last book, that hideous strength, is based on earth. And I've just read it, reread it
• 50:30
  recently. It's a strange book. But if you've got the sort of masculine world of the first book
• 50:38
  and a feminine world of the second book, Michael Ward was saying to me when I was talking to him
• 50:44
  about this book and the struggles I had with it. He said, well, actually it's the reconciliation
• 50:49
  of the male and female. So let's rely on the discarded image except it's importing this
• 50:56
  imagery of their being spiritual beings at war in our universe who are fighting over the future.
• 51:07
  So let's leave the space trilogy there because I think it might be worth returning to
• 51:13
  that hideous strength in particular later date because it's such a bizarre story.
• 51:18
  Shall we think finally about the implications of what CF Lewis is up to?
• 51:25
  Can you think of any other writers who have used scientific models, discarded ones or not
• 51:33
  to underwrite their fantasy?
• 51:38
  Yeah, there's one particular book, an author, Ted Chang, who he wrote the short story that the film
• 51:50
  Arrival was based on, right, kind of first contacting an alien species and having to kind of
• 51:58
  figure out what their language system is and how that works out. So I enjoyed it as a film.
• 52:04
  The short story is incredible as well. But what he does, what Chang does in his short stories,
• 52:11
  have collection called stories of your life and others, he explores a few different
• 52:19
  models, one of which is the Babylonian models when the short story tower of Babylon.
• 52:28
  He kind of takes seriously the Babylonian construction of the world and somebody kind of walking
• 52:35
  up the tower of Babel. But you have him taking the physics of what a model like that would mean
• 52:44
  and like actually putting that into a story. So it was a really fascinating experience again reading
• 52:52
  it to say like, okay, this is a sort of science fiction that's based on the scientific understanding
• 53:01
  or conceptualization of that particular time period. So that's one author that I've seen
• 53:09
  play with some of these different models, kind of cosmological models in fiction, in short story,
• 53:16
  not in like long form, but in short story. And I think the perfect for short story kind of
• 53:22
  thought experiments, it's really a great medium for that.
• 53:27
  In longer form, I can think of some, the three-body problem. So I apologise to those that you can
• 53:34
  speak Chinese, but the three-body problem by Liu Chixin, please educate me on the right
• 53:45
  pronunciation. That is fascinating exploration of how to describe a digital universe, like computing.
• 53:56
  Some of the sort of dream-like sequences in this other culture they're interacting with. There
• 54:02
  is incredibly memorable with this period of time they go through. Anyway, if you've seen the Netflix
• 54:08
  series, you'll know what I'm talking about, but the book is also brilliant. And then of course,
• 54:12
  Frankenstein. Frankenstein is Mary Shelley's thinking about the new science of electricity,
• 54:21
  plus pondering the claims of alchemists. So the sort of combination of what was the cutting-edge
• 54:28
  science today with this older alchemy that wasn't exploded science by the time she was thinking
• 54:34
  about it, a discarded image in that case. And then the final one I thought of was of course,
• 54:40
  his Philip Pullman, who he in the Northern Light series is thinking about dark matter. And he
• 54:49
  actually heard him talk about this in a panel in Oxford. And he was sort of, actually there was
• 54:58
  a physicist on the panel talking about the real science. And I remember for all Philip Pullman saying,
• 55:07
  Well, of course, I am just turning into fantasy. I'm not trying to be a scientist when he was
• 55:11
  challenged and some of the bits aren't quite right for science. So we must always say when an
• 55:17
  author like CS Lewis or Philip Pullman or Mary Shelley puts these things into fantasy, what
• 55:23
  they're doing is having fun and applying the model, but they're not actually held to
• 55:30
  rigorous scientific standards because that's a different profession. Yes, press we should put
• 55:36
  some links in our show notes to the books we've mentioned so people can look it up.
• 55:41
  So let's finish Jacob. We've gone around the medieval universe. So where in all the fantasy world
• 55:51
  is the best place do you think to live in the medieval universe? I think I will say just because
• 55:58
  I just finished reading it. And I don't want to take more time deliberating in my own mind.
• 56:05
  I just finished reading DC comics. They have a kind of a mini series, a 12 issue mini series called
• 56:12
  Dark Knights of Steel. And it's a medieval reworking essentially of the kind of DC
• 56:21
  mythology or core characters in a medieval world. So it kind of takes us the starting point is
• 56:27
  what if Superman had crash landed in medieval Europe somewhere without saying where exactly.
• 56:36
  But it wasn't just Superman landing there. His parents also accompanied him. So you have
• 56:41
  these characters kind of being set up as kind of god kings and the people, the relationship to
• 56:51
  you know, to society. You have your Batman character who ends up related to this in some way.
• 56:58
  And part of the fun is kind of if you're familiar with DC characters and mythology kind of seeing
• 57:04
  the clever ways that these characters kind of manifest themselves in a medieval setting.
• 57:10
  And yeah, it's just fun, the great art. So it's Tom Taylor's the author. Yes,
• 57:15
  Mean Poetry, the primary illustrator for those. But yeah, it was it was a fun kind of yeah,
• 57:21
  reimagining of ideas of these characters in a medieval uniquely medieval setting that was,
• 57:28
  yeah, it was a fun fun story. Some twists, turns, mysteries, gorgeous artwork. And so it made me
• 57:34
  want to to see more of that sort of thing kind of reimagining characters from one era,
• 57:42
  contemporary area or some other era into the past that was there was a lot of fun.
• 57:47
  Oh, I love that. I love that. That appeals to me a lot. My brain is outwirling through all the
• 57:53
  other potential comic book universes that you could shift. And so for me, I was thinking it
• 57:59
  would be really fun just to do it flip a switch. And all the people in Star Trek find themselves
• 58:06
  actually in a real version of this medieval universe. So when you set off on the Starship Enterprise,
• 58:15
  so you go through the different spheres and you've got to hear the music of the spheres and
• 58:20
  dodge all these planets and do with the prime mover and the fixed stars. I don't just be wonderful.
• 58:28
  Just to see them having to reimagine themselves in that way. It could always be one of those
• 58:34
  holodeck episodes in the next generation. But that would be great fun. Thank you so much
• 58:41
  talking to me about the discarded image. And so I hope as a result, people don't discard it so
• 58:48
  much anymore and we'll go back and reexamine it and find in it new fresh sources of inspiration.
• 58:53
  Thank you very much, Jacob.
• 58:55
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• 59:03
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• 59:11
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