The Discarded Image

“Every writer, if he possibly can, bases himself on an earlier writer, follows an auctour: preferably a Latin one.”

In this passage, Lewis makes it a point to emphasize that medieval writers established credibility by basing their work on the writings of Greek or Roman writers and philosophers. Because they were a people concerned with The Prevalence of Hierarchy and Order, this approach allowed them to adhere to existing structures of thought instead of straying beyond the bounds of the established order.

“I hope to persuade the reader not only that this Model of the Universe is a supreme medieval work of art but that it is in a sense the central work, that in which most particular works were embedded, to which they constantly referred, from which they drew a great deal of their strength.”

The Medieval Model informs Lewis’s understanding of medieval literature. It was the absolute foundation on which medieval writers built their texts; Lewis therefore stresses that modern students must understand the Model in order to have any understanding of medieval literature.

“Again, the reader will find that I freely illustrate features of the Model which I call ‘medieval’ from authors who wrote after the close of the Middle Ages; from Spenser, Donne or Milton. I do so because, at many points, the old Model still underlies their work.”

By describing certain writers as medieval, even though they lived after the historical medieval period, Lewis is tracing the Classical Influence on the Medieval Model through the centuries. He also attempts to resist rigidity and dogma in his explanations, making it clear that the Model is only a guideline, not a strict law.

“This is a good instance of the intractable material with which later syncretism was confronted.”

Syncretism is the amalgamation of different religions. Although the Medieval Model appears at first glance to be Christian, it actually incorporates many pre-Christian Greek and Roman ideas that, upon closer scrutiny, contain significant inconsistencies and contradictions.

“The conflict between the old and the new religion was often bitter, and both sides were ready to use coercion when they dared. But at the same time the influence of the one upon the other was very great.”

The tension between Christian and pagan ideas in the first centuries CE fundamentally informs the progression of Classical Influence on the Medieval Model. As Lewis observes, the pagan influence on the Medieval Model is subtle but undeniable. However, it is sometimes difficult to trace exactly which ideas are pagan, as some Classical writers’ faiths are subject to debate.

“The Medieval Model is, if we may use the word, anthropoperipheral. We are creatures of the Margin.”

Lewis coins the word “anthropoperipheral,” which is the opposite of “anthropocentric.” An anthropoperipheral model positions humans on the edges of creation, which is directly contradictory to the Christian doctrine. This is one of the many subtly pagan attributes of the Medieval Model.

“To talk as if inanimate bodies had a homing instinct is to bring them no nearer to us than the pigeons; to talk as if they could ‘obey laws’ is to treat them like men and even like citizens.”

Because medieval people were greatly concerned with The Prevalence of Hierarchy and Order, they thought of all objects as having a natural inclination (“kindly enclyning”) toward their proper place. This is a metaphorical way of speaking, just like contemporary references to the “laws” of physics; it does not suggest that medieval people thought that inanimate objects had agency.

“These facts are in themselves curiosities of mediocre interest. They become valuable only in so far as they enable us to enter more fully into the consciousness of our ancestors by realising how such a universe must have affected those who believed in it.”

It does not matter that the Medieval Model was not a true representation of the universe. What matters is the impact that the Model had on people’s minds and the ways the Model informed The Medieval Relationship to Literature.

“Not that the Christian poet believed in the god because he believed in the planet; but all three things—the visible planet in the sky, the source of influence, and the god—generally acted as a unity upon his mind.”

Classical Influence on the Medieval Model is often hard to reconcile with medieval Christian beliefs. A Christian society could not very well condone the worship of Roman gods, so it was necessary to present any reference to Greek or Roman deities as allegorical in order to avoid threatening Christian hegemony.

“Yet the danger to monotheism in the Middle Ages clearly came not from a cult of angels but from the cult of the Saints.”

Lewis was himself an Anglican, and in this passage, he suggests that worshiping saints draws Christians away from strict monotheism. Notably, although Anglicans are Protestant, they do still venerate saints, standing in contrast to many other Protestant denominations, which consider the act of praying to saints to be a form of idolatry. This difference potentially presents a contradiction in Lewis’s beliefs.

“And any well-read contemporary of Scot’s would have known that his satyrs, Pans, and fauns were classical while his ‘Tom thombe’ and ‘puckle’ were not. But obviously it makes no difference; they all affected the mind in the same way.”

In this passage, Lewis contradicts his statements from the beginning of Chapter 1 about “savage” beliefs arising spontaneously from imagination. Many types of fairies, like the dark “puckle,” arose from the imaginations of the British people. However, Lewis does not recognize that he is describing the very type of belief that he denounced earlier.

“The other hemisphere of the Earth was to us wholly inaccessible. You could write science-fiction about it, but not geography. There could be no question of including it in a map.”

The importance of The Prevalence of Hierarchy and Order was so vital to the medieval mind that it influenced aspects well outside literature, like map-making. Lewis observes that it would have been unthinkable to include a part of the world in a map that could not be reached because it would involve crossing a torrid, uninhabitable zone. Doing so would mean violating and disobeying the natural order of the world.

“The importance of all this for our own purpose is that nearly every reference to Reason in the old poets will be in some measure misread if we have in mind only ‘the power by which man deduces one proposition from another.’”

Because English has changed considerably since the Medieval Era, being aware of these lexical shifts is essential for students of medieval literature. If the context for the meaning of a word is lost, it becomes very easy for students to misunderstand or even egregiously misinterpret what medieval authors were trying to say.

“The human body gives us another sense in which man can be called a microcosm, for it, like the world, is built out of the four contraries.”

Again and again, elements of the medieval universe are organized with The Prevalence of Hierarchy and Order, including the human body. By replicating structures of cosmic order within the human body, medieval people could affirm their place and purpose in the universe. This understanding of the self in turn influenced The Medieval Relationship to Literature, in which order and hierarchy were explored, replicated, and explained in detail.

“Their business was to learn the story. If its veracity were questioned they would feel that the burden of disproof lay wholly with the critic.”

The authority of Classical Influence on the Medieval Model was so great that works of literature about Alexander the Great or the Trojan War were understood to be equally historical in nature. Factual accuracy did not enter the conversation at any point, in contrast to modern-day historical texts.

“‘Al-Khowarazmi’ (the man from Khawarazm) suggests an abstract noun algorism, later augrim, which means calculation.”

Al-Khwarizmi was a Persian polymath who, among other accomplishments, brought the Arabic number system to Europe. His name is the origin of the Middle English algorism, which later developed into the modern word algorithm. Lewis does not make this explicit connection, perhaps because the word algorithm was not widely used until after the 1960s, when it began to be connected to computing.

“No one who has read the higher kinds of medieval and Renaissance poetry has failed to notice the amount of solid instruction—of science, philosophy, or history—that they carry.”

The allegorical nature of much of medieval literature enabled writers to use their works to provide instruction to readers. Because the authority of ideas found in books was so supreme, readers were prepared to be convinced of almost any idea; all the better if these ideas affirmed the Model or came from the Classical Period.

“Every particular fact and story became more interesting and more pleasurable if, by being properly fitted in, it carried one’s mind back to the Model as a whole.”

Unlike today, where few people celebrate phenomena such as black holes or bask in the contemplation of the theory of evolution by natural selection in their literary works, medieval people held a deep love and veneration for their Model. As a result, their writing held a quality of adoration and contemplation seldom found in other time periods.

“The writing is so limpid and effortless that the story seems to be telling itself. You would think, till you tried, that anyone could do the like. But in reality no story tells itself. Art is at work.”

In this passage, Lewis expounds upon the perceived virtues of medieval literature, admiring the fact that medieval poets deliberately fade into the background of the stories they endeavor to tell. He also stresses the fact that this attribute was no accident, but a stylistic choice informed by Rhetoric; it does not imply a lack of skill at all, but it does reflect medieval people’s belief that the story was more important than the poet telling it.

“They are behaving more like a historian who misrepresents the documents because he feels sure that things must have happened in a certain way. They are anxious to convince others, perhaps to half-convince themselves, that they are not merely ‘making things up.’”

The Medieval Relationship to Literature did not require or expect writers to be rigorous about historical accuracy. In fact, writers frequently fabricated their topics entirely, possibly without even noticing they had done so. Lewis never fully explains whether he believes this type of invention to be an intentional misrepresentation or an honest attempt at getting things right.

“The medievals were, indeed, fully conscious (Dante especially) that poets not only gave but also won fame. But in the last resort it is the fame they give—the fame of Aeneas, not of Virgil—that really matters.”

In the Medieval Era, poets were not lauded for their own skill; instead, they were seen as upholding the fame of the mythical figures they wrote about or of the other authors from whom they translated and borrowed. The trend toward authorial fame irks and worries Lewis, who implicitly suggests that the medieval understanding of fame was more just than the present one.

“Literature exists to teach what is useful, to honour what deserves honour, to appreciate what is delightful. The useful, honourable, and delightful things are superior to it: it exists for their sake; its own use, honour, or delightfulness is derivative from theirs.”

The Medieval Relationship to Literature promoted usefulness, but not factual accuracy. Because of the conflation of fiction with history, it is extremely difficult for scholars to determine precisely what medieval people really believed about the world, what they accepted as quaint convention, and what they knew to be false.

“Part of what we now know is that we cannot, in the old sense, ‘know what the universe is like’ and that no model we can build will be, in that old sense, ‘like’ it.”

The current model of the universe is too abstract for Lewis to find it satisfying or comfortable. In some ways, a more abstract model makes it more difficult for people to incorporate contemporary scientific understandings of the universe into their art and literature; the world is no longer as foundationally dependent on a cosmic Model as it was in the Medieval Era.