Medieval Echoes in CS Lewis's Space Trilogy
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University of Arkansas, Fayetteville ScholarWorks@UARK Theses and Dissertations 12-2019 Recovered Images: Medieval Echoes in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy Nathan Earl Houston Fayard University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons, Classical Literature and Philology Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Medieval Studies Commons Citation Fayard, N. E. (2019). Recovered Images: Medieval Echoes in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/3451 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UARK. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UARK. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Recovered Images: Medieval Echoes in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Nathan Earl Houston Fayard Samford University Bachelor of Arts in English, 2006 University of Illinois, Springfield Master of Arts in English, 2011 December 2019 University of Arkansas This dissertation is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council. ________________________________ William Quinn, Ph.D. Dissertation Director ________________________________ ________________________________ Joshua Smith, Ph.D. Mary Beth Long, Ph.D. Committee Member Committee Member Abstract C. S. Lewis has begun to garner more scholarly attention in the last few decades, but his first novels, his science fiction or Space trilogy, continue to be largely ignored by academia. Yet, these three novels are deserving of more serious study, as they are pioneering works of literary science fiction, and even more surprisingly, of literary medievalism. Though long derided as mere reactionary attacks on Modernism and science, when properly understood, these strange and wonderful tales actually reveal the complexity and nuance of Lewis’s response to his times. In them, the Inkling author creates a unique combination of the medieval and the modern, never merely repeating his medieval sources and inspirations and never merely rejecting the modern ideas and texts to which he was responding. Instead, he creates a hybrid, a blending of the two that is greater than the sum of its parts. This project explores the unique perspective that results from this blending, placing Lewis’s texts in the context of the science fiction of their day and revealing the revolutionary repurposing of many of the tropes of the genre along with the traditions of medieval literature and philosophy. It examines Lewis’s combination of the interplanetary romance with a medieval sense of wonder to create nearly unprecedented tales of non-acquisitive exploration that stand in stark contrast to those produced in the early days of science fiction. It also traces the medieval origins of many of the other unique features of the trilogy, including the combination of quest and pilgrimage in the form of the Irish immrama that may form the basis of the structures of both the individual books and the series as a whole. Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my wonderful wife, Jenn, Whose unfailing, translunar love and never-ending support have been my North Star, The fixed point for my own journeys among the heights and depths of this adventure. Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 0.1 Publication Background and Reception ..................................................................... 7 0.2 Series Summary ........................................................................................................... 11 0.3 Anti-Science Accusations ............................................................................................ 16 Chapter 1: Scientism and Science Fiction: The Genre Background to Lewis’s Trilogy ...... 21 1.1 C. S. Lewis and Scientism ........................................................................................... 23 1.2 Science Fiction and Scientism: No Peace Between Human and Alien .................... 36 Chapter 2: Journeys of Discovery: Ransom’s Voyages as Medieval Journeys of Exploration .................................................................................................................................. 44 2.1 Lewis’s Medieval Wonder: Romance and Pilgrimage ............................................... 53 2.2 Spiritual Purpose ......................................................................................................... 60 2.3 Non-Appropriative Wonder ......................................................................................... 63 2.4 Imaginative Education and Reeducation ................................................................... 72 2.5 Non-Monstrous Monsters ........................................................................................... 86 Chapter 3: Cosmic Immram: The Structural Similarities Between the Space Trilogy and Irish Immrama .......................................................................................................................... 102 3.1 Beginning in the Normal World ............................................................................... 104 3.2 Crime and Exile ......................................................................................................... 106 3.3 Voyage Blessed by Holy or Magical Figure ............................................................. 109 3.4 Mist Barrier and Entry into the Otherworld ............................................................ 109 3.5 Otherworld Islands .................................................................................................... 116 3.6 Counseled by Holy Hermit ........................................................................................ 119 3.7 Reconciled to Agent of Exile ..................................................................................... 122 3.8 Return to the Normal World ..................................................................................... 126 Chapter 4: As Above, So Below: Medieval Echoes in the Underworlds of C.S. Lewis’s Fiction......................................................................................................................................... 129 4.1 The Silver Chair’s Underland .................................................................................. 137 4.2 Perelandra’s Caverns ............................................................................................... 141 4.3 Underworld Transfigured ......................................................................................... 146 4.4 Proper Wonder and the Great Dance ....................................................................... 154 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 164 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 165 1 Introduction C.S. Lewis: Re-Mythologizer “Multa renascentur qua jam cecidere, cadentque / Quae nunc sunt in honore”1 Space has been described as the final frontier, and indeed, it may seem like the last place to go, however boldly, if one is in search of the medieval, but such conventional wisdom is ill- matched to the strange and fascinating texts that make up C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. These neglected novels are an intriguing mélange of the modern and the medieval, science fiction tales that shade into fantasy and in which a medieval cosmology, complete with angelic guides for its planets and demonic threats to its peace, shares the page with space ships, aliens, and strange new worlds. More importantly, this unusual mixture produces some of the very first literary science fiction of the 20th century, as well as one of the first serious uses of medievalism in the genre. These texts, long ignored by literary scholars in both fields, are worth reading and studying, both on their own merits, and for their fascinating mixture of the medieval and the Modern. Though largely ignored for most of their history, the Space Trilogy novels have begun to receive more critical attention in the last several decades as the acceptance of C. S. Lewis as an author worthy of serious consideration has grown They have been the subject of three book- length studies and a number of articles. David Downing’s excellent overview of the series, Planets in Peril (1992), though providing a survey of many different approaches to the books, focuses on a biographical reading and remains the starting point for any serious work on the Ransom novels. Jared Lobdell’s breezily erudite later study, The Scientifiction Novels of C. S. 1 Horace, quoted in C. S. Lewis’s Allegory of Love. 2 Lewis (2004), looks at the novels as a form of “satirical pageant,” but despite the intriguing premise, it does not seem to have had much of an impact on the study of the series. The latest treatment of the entire Trilogy is Sanford Schwartz’s C. S. Lewis on the Final Frontier (2009), which examines the thoughtful, nuanced ways in which Lewis was responding to the science and ideology of his day. Although each of these studies has picked up on some of