The Discarded Image

Lewis opens The Discarded Image by explaining where prevalent ideas found in medieval literature come from. He differentiates medieval beliefs from the beliefs of cultures he describes as “savage,” arguing that “[s]avage beliefs are thought to be the spontaneous response of a human group to its environment, a response made principally by the imagination” (10). He contends that medieval beliefs were different, and that while they often at a glance appear to be like “savage” ones, these beliefs were in fact building on earlier ideas that were originally developed by writers in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. He gives several examples of medieval literary works that trace ideas back to the Classical period. When Guillaume Deguileville’s Pèlerinage de l’Homme orders the universe into two separate realms (above and below the orbit of the moon), this reflects an idea originally proposed by Aristotle. 

Lewis contends that unlike “savage communities” whose knowledge comes “from participation in the immemorial pattern of behaviour, and in part by word of mouth, from the old men of the tribe” (13), medieval knowledge came primarily from books. Knowledge was generally accepted so long as it came from virtually any written source. Medieval literature took influence from Germanic and Celtic influences, but Latin sources had the biggest impact by far. 

Lewis believes that medieval people held a particular affinity for order and systems and that this affinity came from the influence of writers like Aristotle. A prime example of this love of ordering can be found in the Medieval Model of the universe. The Model combines the two great medieval loves: books and systems. From the books of the classical period, medieval writers obtained a variety of ideas about how the universe was ordered. From their love of ordering and systems, they were able to take these often contradictory ideas and harmonize them so that they all fit into “a great, and finely ordered, multiplicity” (17) that helped them to better understand the cosmos. In this way, medieval writers were able to combine Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, pre-Christian, and Christian ideas into their model of the universe, ultimately creating a rigid but beautiful hierarchy. Lewis views the Medieval Model as a great work of art that should be central to any student’s understanding of medieval literature.

The medieval period in literature extends further than the historical medieval period because it survived for as long as people subscribed to the same model, or “backcloth,” to underpin their writing. Therefore, Lewis includes writers like Donne and Milton in the broader canon of medieval literature. The model of the universe that medieval people used to understand the world was provisional and ultimately replaceable. The people of every age have reevaluated and changed older conceptions of the universe as new evidence arose and their needs and preferences changed. Lewis emphasizes that this pattern is also true of modern scientific theory and accounts for advancements made in the sciences over the course of history. The model is not necessarily a snapshot of the exact beliefs of the medieval period; instead, it is a tool that people used partly to understand the universe and partly to create great literature. 

People did, by and large, believe that the Medieval Model was true, but Lewis asserts that truth is not the most important element of any model. What matters is not whether a geocentric universe is real, but whether and how it informs people’s ability to create art, to understand one another, to practice their religion, and to make use of conventional metaphors. The Model was actually more significant for poets and writers than for scientists, philosophers, or laypeople of the age. It provided a common language and an established canon on which writers could hang their works. It also allowed them to defer to the authority of the classical writers who originally developed elements of the model, thus elevating their work. Lewis is careful to note that not all medieval writers used this model of the universe. Those writing explicitly religious texts tended to ignore much of it in favor of a more serious, didactic approach, with the notable exception of Dante, the author of The Divine Comedy. Religious writers were particularly keen to steer clear of non-Christian (or what Lewis calls “Pagan”) influences in the Model.

Lewis concedes that there is “no doubt a level below the influence of the Model” (22). Many people would have debated or disagreed with aspects of the Model, and others would have been entirely ignorant or uninterested in any elements of it that did not pertain to their own lives. Laypeople especially might have been unaware that the Earth was round, for example, simply because “they did not think about it at all” (22), not because the Model described the world as flat. In the Model, the Earth was a sphere.