C. S. Lewis and Myth 2023

"Shut In and Shut Out": "The Cold" and the "Eternal Silence" in  Frankenstein *Note: Originally, I planned to go through Chapters 11-17 of Frankenstein and show all the passages that prove that the type of danger Lewis outlines in On Stories is present in Frankenstein . And that would be a cool paper idea. But such close reading is what I've been doing this whole time as I interact with all the readings (because it's what I've been trained to do) - systematically and logically trying to parse stuff out. That's the very thing all the philosophers we're reading say won't help me understand the mystical experience and get the true or full benefits of myth, and they seem to be right so far. So, instead, I'll lay the philosophical groundwork from Lewis and then describe my feelings, my experience, upon first reading these chapters. (I think it is the closest to a story-incited ecstatic or mystical experience I've had.) *********...

For the most part, I would argue that, in terms of mythopoeia, Lewis is a "successful sub-creator. He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is 'true': it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside." (Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories," 60).  However, there is one thing that keeps booting me out of the world of Narnia, such that I'm "then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside": rampant sexism. I always seek and am granted re-entry back into Narnia after sexist moments in the texts, but it is a little frustrating to be so frequently ejected from the Secondary World. The question is: are these frequent ejections really Lewis's "fault" as writer / World creator, or is the shortcoming actually my own? In other words, is it fair to hold authors of past times to the social standards of our modern ti...

Since I'm having trouble grasping ecstatic / mystical religious experience, I decided to read St. Julian's Revelations of Divine Love , which Dr. Redick mentioned in class. On the positive side, I found much beauty in St. Julian's varied experiences of unity with God / Christ / The Trinity, and I gained much from considering the idea of Jesus as Mother. But, in terms of the didactic and logical aspects related to the problem of evil / sin, I must admit I am deeply disturbed and thus not feeling any more comfort nor clarity on why Aslan would create Narnia knowing the White Witch was already there. More below on each of the above ideas.  Pros Unity with God  In Dr. Redick's "Poetic Participation," the ontological framework of "participation" is described as a meeting where two entities remain separate, or "koinonia," - "to share with [a separate] someone in something which he has" [my addition] (1). Such participation is explicitly...

     I had never read the Chronicles of Narnia before becoming a student in this class. Against a good amount of my classmates' advice, I decided it would be best to try and digest the content chronologically, rather than in the order they were released by. So, my journey in Narnia begins with The Magician's Nephew . I immediately noticed a kind of connection between Lewis' words and the concepts we had explored prior to diving into Narnia, particularly in regards to the term 'magic'. In his work, "On Fairy-Stories," Tolkien made an important distinction between 'magic' and faerie. While many take the terms to mean the same thing, Tolkien exposes that magic is a type of manipulation of the primary world, while faerie concerns a completely secondary world altogether. This act of manipulation isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can be harmful when it is equated to the power of faerie. Instead, Tolkien proposes the term 'enchantment' to ...