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A Day in the Life of a Hero: the Three Unities in C.S. Lewis's Neo-Classical Romance Joe R Inklings Forever Volume 9 A Collection of Essays Presented at the Ninth Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Article 2 Friends 5-29-2014 A Day in the Life of a Hero: The Three Unities in C.S. Lewis's Neo-Classical Romance Joe R. Christopher Tarleton University Follow this and additional works at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever Part of the English Language and Literature Commons, History Commons, Philosophy Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Christopher, Joe R. (2014) "A Day in the Life of a Hero: The Three Unities in C.S. Lewis's Neo-Classical Romance," Inklings Forever: Vol. 9 , Article 2. Available at: https://pillars.taylor.edu/inklings_forever/vol9/iss1/2 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for the Study of C.S. Lewis & Friends at Pillars at Taylor University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Inklings Forever by an authorized editor of Pillars at Taylor University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INKLINGS FOREVER, Volume IX A Collection of Essays Presented at the Ninth FRANCES WHITE EWBANK COLLOQUIUM on C.S. LEWIS & FRIENDS Taylor University 2014 Upland, Indiana A Day in the Life of a Hero: The Three Unities in C.S. Lewis’s Neo-Classical Romance Joe R. Christopher Tarleton State University Christopher, Joe R. “A Day in the Life of a Hero: The Three Unities in C.S. Lewis’s Neo-Classical Romance” Inklings Forever 9 (2014) www.taylor.edu/cslewis A Day in the Life of a Hero: The Three Unities in C.S. Lewis’s Neo-Classical Romance Joe R. Christopher Tarleton State University Introduction: The Three Unities should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage The last two words of this essay’s represent more than one place. subtitle are a deliberate non-sequitur, of [However, “{s}ome critics were content course. Originally considered, the romance is to have the action confined merely to a medieval genre, reflecting a chivalric age the same town or city” (Holman and (Holman and Harmon 283); it has come to Harmon 489).] mean a type of adventure story, often with 3. The unity of time: the action in a play fantasy, often with significant symbolism, should take place over no more than 24 sometimes involving love between a hero and hours. (“Classical unities.”)1 heroine—still retaining some of the tone of the medieval romances. On the other hand, As said, the critics who established these the neo-classical impulse is based on three unities for dramas pointed to Aristotle’s imitations or parodies of the Greek and Poetics as the basis of these rules. Thus the Roman classics (cf. 314, 315). The argument classicism in neo-classicism. Actually, as is here is that C. S. Lewis’s “The Nameless Isle” generally known among students, Aristotle shows the influence of the three unities as only set up as a rule that a drama should have understood by the Italian critics of the one unified plot (or “action”). He observed sixteenth century, the French critics of that plays normally are restricted in time to seventeenth, and by such English critics as twenty-four hours (“a single revolution of the John Dryden in the later seventeenth. The sun”) or slightly more—but this was said only classical source of this criticism is the Poetics in contrast to the greater scope of an epic, not by Aristotle. Thus, “The Nameless Isle” is, in as a rule. And he said nothing about unity of its way, a neo-classical work, even though the place at all; that was developed by the Italian three unities were understood to apply to critics by analogy to the unity of time dramas, not narrative poems. (“Classical unities”; Holman and Harmon 488- Here is a basic statement of the three 489). Thus the neo in neo-classicism. unities: A traditional contrast of British dramas to show (or not show) the unities is 1. The unity of action [or plot]: a play that between Shakespeare’s Antony and should have one main action that it Cleopatra (probably written in 1606 or 1607) follows, with no or few subplots. and John Dryden’s All for Love; or, The World 2. The unity of place: a play should Well Lost (1677). Shakespeare’s drama cover a single physical space and violates the unity of place, as E. K. Chambers A Day in the Life of a Hero · Joe R. Christopher writes: “Rome, Misenum, Athens, Actium, must be omitted from the thesis. He has an Syria, Egypt are the localities, with much opening (ll. 1-61a) about the mariner who is further subdivision in the Egyptian scenes” his protagonist, his ship and shipmates, and (qtd. Wilders 20). Shakespeare violates the the storm which destroys the ship and unity of time, with his play spread over ten drowns all the rest of the crew. All this is years (from actions by Antony in his forty- background to the mariner being the sole second year until his death [Wilders 87]). survivor, ending on the island, “The Nameless Shakespeare violates the unity of plot, with a Isle” (as Walter Hooper chose to title the political conflict over the rule of the Roman poem [Hooper xii]). The mariner is Empire; for example, “the battles in which exhausted after safely reaching the shore, and this contest [is] fought out occupy much of falls asleep. After that opening, the present the third and fourth acts” (Wilders 2); also, survey of the unity of time begins with the there is what may be called the tragedy of mariner waking from his sleep. Lewis writes Enobarbus, ending with his suicide in Act 4, in the voice of his protagonist: Scene 9. On the other hand, Dryden’s play “occupies only the last day of [Antony and Certainly when sleep left me Cleopatra’s] lives and is confined throughout There was calm and cool. No crashing to Alexandra” (Wilders 13). Thus, unity of of the sea, time and place. The unity of plot is But darkness all about. Dim-shadowed maintained in the focus on Antony and leaves Cleopatra—for example, Enobarbus does not In mildest air moved above me, appear in Dryden’s play (cf. Wilder 13). And, over all, earth-scented smell The cultural difference that seventy Sweetly stealing about the sea-worn years made in dramatic theory and practice man,3 makes it sound as if Shakespeare was entirely And faintly, as afar, fresh-water sounds, adverse to the unities, but two of his plays— Runnings and ripplings upon rock Comedy of Errors and The Tempest—are often stairs cited as observing the three unities. This is Where moss grows most. (61b-69a)4 certainly true of Shakespeare’s reworking of Plautus’s Menaechmi as the Comedy of Errors, So the basic narrative begins in the night, allowing for some casual shifts of place within with the “darkness” around the mariner. Ephesus. Perhaps a strict Italian or French After a song is heard, a second description critic would have been upset by appears: Shakespeare’s first scene in The Tempest occurring off shore, not on the island upon The clouds parted which the rest of the action is placed; but, Suddenly. The seemly, slow-gliding except for that possible violation of the unity moon of place, and again allowing for shifts of locale Swam, as it were in shallows, of the on the island, the rest of the play obeys the silver cloud, unities.2 Out into the open, and with orb’d With this background on the three splendor unities, Lewis’s “The Nameless Isle” may now She gleamed upon the groves of a great be considered, to this degree as if it were a forest. (83b-86) dramatic work and not a narrative. The description of the forest continues. What The Unity of Time follows that passage is the appearance of the Queen; shortly thereafter, in a vision she is First, the unity of time will be seen as a type of earth-mother; next, she talks elaborately traced. But, as an introduction, it the mariner into going to rescue her daughter must be admitted that Lewis’s opening lines A Day in the Life of a Hero · Joe R. Christopher from the wizard, the enchanter, who has reach the west coast of the island in the taken (she says) half of the island for his rule. evening: After the Queen leaves or vanishes comes the dawn: Day was dropping to the dazzling plain Of the waves westward. Winging Dawn was round me, homeward Cool and coloured, and there came a Came the flying flocks; flowers were breeze closing, Brushing the grasses. Birds were Level light over the land was poured. chattering. (227b-29) (383-87) At this point, the narrator is still in the forest; The mariner sees in a valley the statue of a with the sword the Queen has given him, he maiden. The wizard is also there, and he journeys out of the forest into a landscape of argues for the mariner to drink his potion downs, with far hills. which will turn him to stone, just as has the The next temporal step occurs at mid- maiden drunk, the maiden being the wizard’s morning; the poem is specific: daughter As the mariner is poised to drink, the time has advanced to sunset: Half-way in heav’n to his highest throne The gold sun glittering had gained In the west, scarlet, above[.] (259-260) Day was dying. Dark night apace Over earth’s eastern edge towards us In short, the sun is halfway to noontime.
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