Dance As Metaphor and Myth in Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams

Volume 12 Number 3 Article 2 4-15-1986 Dance as Metaphor and Myth in Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams Peter Schakel Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Schakel, Peter (1986) "Dance as Metaphor and Myth in Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 12 : No. 3 , Article 2. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol12/iss3/2 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 Guest of Honor address at Mythcon 16. Notes the occurrence of images of dance, including the cosmic dance, and their metaphorical usage. Concentrates on Lewis but includes examples from Tolkien and Williams. Previously appeared in Mythcon XVI, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, 1985. Ed. Diana Pavlac. Altadena: Mythopoeic Society, 1985. 5–14. Additional Keywords Dance imagery in literature; Ann Chancelor; Christine Lowentrout 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/vol12/iss3/2 Page 4 MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986 Dance as Metaphor and Myth in Lewis, Tolkien, and Williams Guest of Honor Keynote Address Peter Schakel "'I should like the Balls infinitely better,' said dances were a torment... the discomfort of Caroline Bingley, 'if they were carried on in a one's Eton suit and stiff shirt, the aching different manner. It would surely be much more feet and burning head, and the mere weariness rational if conversation instead of dancing made the of being kept up so many hours after one's order of the day.' 'Much more rational, I dare say,' usual bedtime. Even adults, I fancy, would replied her brother, 'but it would not be near so much not find an evening party very endurable like a Ball.'" Lewis quoted this passage from Jane without the attraction of sex and the Austen's Pride and PreJudice at least three times, in attraction of alcohol; and how a small boy essays and letters [1]: obviously he relished it first who can neither flirt nor drink should be because he enJoyed Austen, an author Jane Studdock in expected to enJoy prancing about on a That Hideous Strength asked for when she stayed in bed polished floor til the small hours of the all day recuperating from the burns inflicted by Miss morning, is beyond my conception. (Surprised Hardcastle's cigars [2] (as Lewis himself, "while ill, by Joy, pp.46-47 [ch.3].) . reread . Sense & Sensibility" [3] — he had learned, early on, ' ' t o make a minor illness one of the The appeal of dance for Lewis, it would seem, arises pleasures of life" [4] by spending the waking hours not from experience with it as an activity but from its with a good story, or two, or three). I suspect he aesthetic and imaginative impact as an idea, even as an relished the passage also because of what it says about Idea or archetype. Dance had been used for hundreds of dance, an image he used repeatedly in his works, years by authors Lewis respected greatly to depict a usually to depict that which is non-rational (he would physical and metaphysical universe Lewis emotionally say super-rational), imaginative, even mythical. I want longed for and spiritually lived in [5]. here to examine his references to dance, with occasional glances at passages from Charles Williams In the western cultural tradition music is better and J.R.R. Tolkien akin to them, and consider their known than dance as an image of the orderliness and implications for Lewis's views on literature and for harmony of the cosmos. The image is grounded in Plato's his world-view as a whole. adaptation of Pythagorean notions about the beauty and proportion of numbers to the physical universe: "On the upper surface of each circle is a siren, who goes round It is intriguing that dance as an image or symbol with them, hymning a single tone or note. The eight had such appeal to one who himself did not enJoy together form one harmony [6]". By association with the dancing. In his late fifties, Lewis describes myth of Amphion's use of the lyre to erect a wall, unpleasant memories of childhood dances: charming rocks and thus moving them into their proper places, music became also a symbol of creation, giving It was the custom of the neighborhood to give order to what previously had been chaotic. Thus, in the parties which were really dances for adults divine creative act, the elements, scattered about but to which, none the less, mere schoolboys "without form, and void" (Gen. 1:2), were drawn into and schoolgirls were asked.... To me these order by the harmonizing power of music. The opening of MYTHLORE 45: Spring 1986 Page 5 Dryden's "A Song for St. C ecilia's Day, 1687" (set to Wherein the daunce doth bid it turne or music expressively by Handel in 1739), expresses the t r a c e : myth powerfully: This wondrous myracle did Love devise, For Dauncing is Loves proper exercise. [13] From Harmony, from heav'nly Harmony This universal Frame began The important thing in all this is not the image When N atu re u n d ern ea th a heap itself, but the world view it affirms. It assumes that Of Jarring Atomes lay. And cou'd not heave her Head, the universe is a cosmos, a harmonious system, and that The tuneful Voice was heard from high, human life , as an integral part of that whole, also has order, unity, and meaning. The universe is not doing Arise ye more than dead. rock or disco dancing — unpatterned, chaotic, Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry, individualistic; it echoes the stately movement of the In order to their stations leap, And Musick's pow'r obey [7], chorus in a Greek tragedy or the stylized formality of the country dance in an Austen novel, "The ladies and gentlemen ranged as two long rows facing one another, This myth is employed by Tolkien in the creation story whilst the couples at the extreme ends danced down the in his Ainulindale [8] and by Lewis in The Magician's set [14]." Lewis, Tolkien and Williams accepted that Nephew, as the Lion Aslan sings the land and creatures world view — it is one of the strongest and deepest of Narnia into existence [9]. areas of kinship among them. They could respond to such imagery with an empathy impossible for most of their In an analogous and closely related myth, the compatriots at Oxford: dinosaurs can dance, though the universe became orderly and regular by being made to curators of museums may not recognize or be able to dance. Andrew Marvell's retelling of how Amphion enter the movements. [15] constructed the walls of Thebes illustrates the easy transition from the one myth to the other: "The rougher Dancing occurs on several levels in Lewis's works. Stones, unto his Measures hew'd,/ Dans'd up in order First, dancing occurs as simple image — literal from the Qarryes rude [10]." Such use of dance as a dancing as part of the plot in his stories and poema. cosmological symbol, like the use of music, can be Fauns and trees dance in Prince Caspian, with Caspian traced to Plato, as, in the Tiaaeus he describes how and even the dwarf Trumpkin Joining in [16], and the Creator fashioned the world after its eternal Bacchus and Silenus, later, lead a romp across the p a tte r n : countryside freeing those who have been held by the constraints of Miraz: "With leaping and dancing and When all things were in disorder God created singing, with music and laughter and roaring and in each thing in relation to itself, and in barking and neighing, they a ll came to the place where all things in relation to each other, all the Miraz's army stood flinging down their swords and measures and harmonies which they could holding up their hands [17]." Also, there is the dance possibly receive.... The fixed stars were J ill Scrubb sees when she emerges form the underworld created, to be divine and eternal animals, in The Silver Chair. Fauns and dryads were ever-abiding and revolving after the same manner and on the same spot; and the other doing a dance — a dance with so many stars which reverse their motion.... Vain complicated steps and figures that it took would be the attempt to tell all the figures you some time to understand it .... Circling of them circling as in dance,... and to say round and round the dancers was a ring of which of these deities in their conJunctions Dwarfs, all dressed in their finest clothes; meet, and which of them are in oposition, and mostly scarlet with fur-lined hoods and in what order they get behind and before one golden tassles and big furry top-boots.

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