Volume 10 Number 2 Article 12 1983 C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce and the Medieval Dream Vision Robert Boeing Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Boeing, Robert (1983) "C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce and the Medieval Dream Vision," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 10 : No. 2 , Article 12. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol10/iss2/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Discusses the genre of the medieval dream vision, with summaries of some of the best known (and their precursors). Analyzes The Great Divorce as “a Medieval Dream Vision in which [Lewis] redirects the concerns of the entire genre.” Additional Keywords Lewis, C.S. The Great Divorce; Medieval dream vision—Relation to The Great Divorce; Medieval dream vision—Sources This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol10/iss2/12 M YTHLORE 36: Summer 1983 Page 31 C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorceand the Medieval Dream Vision Robert Boenig As a medievalist, C.S. Lewis, of course, knew that the put, the plot of the early Dream Vision is this: a first-person Dream Vision was one of the most important genres of the narrator falls asleep and meets a guide who reveals some kind Middle Ages; after all, a chapter of his The .Allegory of Lore of wisdom to him which will either comfort him or give him is devoted to the most famous medieval Dream Vision, The needed knowledge. Romance of the Rose,1 and references to other Dream Visions The Romance of the Rose, begun in 1237 by Guillaume de are scattered throughout his critical writing.2 Works like the Lorris and completed forty or so years later by Jean de Meun, Old French Romance of the Rose3 and the Middle English was by far the most influential of medieval Dream Visions-so Dream Visions by Chaucer (The Book of the Duchess, The much so, that it should be considered the fourth of the genre’s House of Fame. The Parliament of Fowls, and The Legend of primary sources. In it, a young dreamer finds himself outside Good Women)4 and John Lydgate (Reason and Sensuality)5 a garden in the month of May; on its outside wall are paint­ attest both to the long popularity of the genre (c. AD 1200- ings of unpleasant allegorical figures-Hate, Jealousy, and the 1450) and to its versatility: religious, amorous, elegaic, satiric, like. Once a beautiful young woman named Idleness lets him and moral are the concerns of one or the other of these poems. in through the wicker gate, however, he finds not only the As a medievalist, Lewis also knew that creativity is a product of most pleasant of spring-time surroundings-birds singing and the reworking of source material as well as ex nihilo originality; flowers blooming-but also the corresponding pleasant allegori­ his famous article, ‘"What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato"6 cal figures walking about: Youth, Beauty, and, of course, the and his use of Milton's Paradise Lost for Perelandra, the works God of Love. The Dreamer wanders about the garden seeing its of H.G. Wells for Out of the Silent Planet,7 and the novels of wonders until he arrives at a rosebush where he simultaneously Charles Williams for That Hideous Strength are critical and sees a beautiful young blossom and is pierced by the God of creative proof of it. The Great Divorce is as much creative Love's arrows. The Romance of the Rose, as Lewis points out,11 response to source material as his science fiction, for despite is an allegory of the changing psychological states of a lover, the modern landscape with which it begins, it is a medieval and the rest of the poem is devoted to the Dreamer’s attempt Dream Vision in which he redirects the concerns of this entire to pluck the blossom. Guillaume left his poem unfinished, genre. and Jean, in finishing it, turns the pleasant surroundings of The medieval Dream Vision has three precursors: Cicero’s the beginning into a curious satire on the oddities of medieval Dream of Scipio, the biblical Apocalypse, and Boethius’ Con­ life and philosophy. But it is Guillaume’s beginning that be­ solation of Philosophy. In Cicero’s work,8 part of his Republic, queathed both the allegorical method and, more importantly, the statesman Scipio Africanus the younger, on a visit to Nu- the springtime setting to the later medieval Dream Visions.12 midia, falls asleep after a long talk with the Numidian King Chaucer translated the first section of The Romance of Massinissa and encounters his ancestor, Africanus the elder, in the Rose into Middle English, but his more original works a dream. He is transported to the heavens, looks down upon also reflect its influence. In The Legend of Good Women, for the earth from the great, height, and sees some things valuable instance, the narrator-as in all of his Dream Visions, a Active for his understanding of reality. Macrobius wrote a commen­ version of Chaucer himself-leaves his books for a walk in the tary of the work,9 and it is in this form that it was transmitted countryside in May to see his favorite flower, the daisy. He to the Middle Ages. Chaucer, referring to this commentary in later falls asleep and finds himself in the springtime garden three of his Dream Visions, seems particularly interested in of the God of Love, who appears to him and berates him for Macrobius’ classifications of dreams into various types.10 The writing so many stories condemning women. But the god is Apocalypse, of course the most familiar early Dream Vision, accompanied by Queen Alceste, the woman who was turned needs little introduction, except for the fact that commentaries into a daisy by the gods for her goodness and who suggests to written about it were almost as influential in the Middle Ages as the God of Love that Chaucer do penance by writing a series the work itself; those of Bede and Beata of Libana are notewor­ of stories about good women. In The Parliament of Fowls, thy. The Consolation of Philosophy recounts a vision Boethius, Chaucer the Dreamer finds himself in the garden of Love not philosopher and statesman under Theodoric in the 6th cen­ in May but on St. Valentine’s Day-because of the pre-reform tury, has in prison while awaiting execution for treason; Lady calendar and the procession of the equinoxes and the relatively Philosophy appears to him to argue that true wisdom lies not warm climate of 14th century England,13 the very beginning of in the unstable world of earthly success. Boethius was trans­ Spring. He there witnesses the gathering of the various birds mitted to the Middle Ages in numerous translations, including to choose their mates according to the customs of courtly love. those into English of King Alfred (9th century) and Chaucer Chaucer departs somewhat from these love-related concerns in (c. 1380). Somewhat out of our time period, but still and in­ his earliest Dream Vision, The Book of the Duchess. There the teresting attestation to Boethius’ popularity, is the translation Dreamer finds himself in the springtime garden not to learn made in the late 16th century by Queen Elizabeth I. Briefly about love, but to participate in an elegy for its loss: he comes Page 32 MYTHLORE 36: Summer 1983 across a Black Knight who is mourning the death of his Lady- instance, have analogues in medieval Dream Visions. We hear an allegory, of course, for the death of Blanche the wife of the birdsong encountered in most visions (see RR 700 ff; PF Chaucer’s patron. John of Gaunt. Chaucer's fourth Dream 190-1) throughout The Great Divorce (see, for instance, pp. Vision. Thr\e House of Fame is, however, a more radical change 26, 28, and 128).16 Similarly, the first flower that the narrator of pace, for there the genre is satirized: the narrator dreams Lewis, like Chaucer in The Legend of Good Women, encounters not in Spring but in December, the garden is transformed into in his garden is the daisy (compare GD, p. 28 with LGW, F- a desert island, and the courtly God of Love is transformed into text, 115 ff.). The river next to which so many events in T h e the fickle, madcap Goddess of Fame. The Dreamer, moreover, Great Divorce take place is an even more important borrowing does not simply awake in the place of his vision but must be than these, because we can trace Lewis’ actual syntax back to carried there by an eagle who complains to him about how very his sources: heavy lie is to carry.