• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

Volume 4 Number 3 Article 10 3-15-1977 Till We Have Faces and its Mythological and Literary Precursors Andrew Howard Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Howard, Andrew (1977) "Till We Have Faces and its Mythological and Literary Precursors," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 4 : No. 3 , Article 10. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol4/iss3/10 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 Compares Till We Have Faces with its “chief source,” the tale of Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. Briefly compares it with other works of Lewis as well. Additional Keywords Apuleius, Lucius. “Cupid and Psyche”—Relation to Till We Have Faces; Cupid and Psyche (myth)—Relation to Till We Have Faces; Lewis, C.S. Till We Have Faces—Sources; Bonnie GoodKnight 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/vol4/iss3/10 the original article. Gene and I had the opportunity to meet at MLA, after the letter was w ritten. It was pleasant to T IL L W E find that we are not so far apart on these issues as I would have imagined. For example, we dis­ covered we agree that women should be ordained if HAVE FACES and they are called to the m inistry, and that Lewis's argument to the contrary in "Priestesses in the Church?" is, in Gene's words, probably the "least its Mythological and persuasive" of Lewis's essays. There does not seem to be substantial evidence against my thesis in Gene's remarks. The quote Literary Precursors from "Addison" is excellent, and may indicate that the process was not quite so simple as I may have made it sound; however, it does not disprove the by Andrew Howard fact that Lewis changed his ideas about women. The "superstitious taboo" mentioned was Lewis's direct reference to menstruation as disqualifying a woman from the priesthood. Surely that is not a C.S. LEWIS never wrote anything else like T ill We Have Face theological argument against the ordination of F a c e s. Lewis' literary output includes children's women; that portion of The Arthurian Torso d o e s books, space fantasies, allegorical fantasies, Christian- seem to be based on a taboo. apologetic essays, and works of medieval scholarship, but Gene reiterates my objections to That Hideous F a ces falls distinctly outside of all of these categories. S t r e n g t h fairly accurately; I do not see that he It is difficult even to assign T ill We Have Faces to a fami­ has answered them. Mother Dimble irritates me not lial fictional genre. It contains elements of the histori­ because she is unintelligent, but because her dis­ cal novel, the maturation novel, the mystic romance, and the paraging generalizations about women are presented fictionalized philosophical treatise; but it does not fit as wisdom. The fact that Grace Ironwood is never comfortably into any of these categories. For all its sin­ given her title bothers me only because so many of gularity, however, T ill We Have Faces has some significant t h e m en a r e given professional titles at various links with its mythological and literary precursors, and our points in the novel. It is not simply that she is understanding of F a ces can be deepened by comparing it with called Grace; she is " M is s Ironwood" while the its forerunners. men are "Dr. Ransom," "Dr. Dimble," "Professor F r o s t . " Lewis takes the story of Psyche and Cupid from the second- Yes, of course there is a White Witch in Nar­ century Latin novel The Transformations o f Lucius, by Lucius nia. I certainly would not expend much energy de­ Apuleius. The fundamental story of the mortal who is pun­ fending the tangential note on a possible racial ished for looking upon her divine lover is much older and reference in the description of the hross. My appears in more than one culture. Lysias, the Greek tutor students found it annoying that after a half a in F a c e s, tells a variant of the story with the sexes dozen references to its color, Ransom expresses reversed,1 and Robert Graves notes that the story "is still his fear in these terms: "It seemed friendly; widely current as a primitive folk-tale in countries as far but it was very big, very black, and he knew no­ apart as Scotland and Hindustan."2 In Apuleius' novel the thing at all about it." "Very big" they could Cupid and Psyche story is a three-chapter short story understand as frightening, but "very black"? inserted into a rollicking and rather disheveled tale of the Gene told me that he was afraid his final quote journeys of an unlucky young nobleman who is turned into an from Lewis was a b it harsh. I w ill close with a ass for meddling with magic. An old woman tells the story better one: "Opposition is true friendship." to a frightened young girl, who has just been kidnapped by robbers, in an effort to make her "feel a little better" William G. Kelly Orinda, California, L'.S.A. (Graves, p. 95). Lucius the ass hears the entire story, and remarks that After reading Jessica Kemball-Cook's suggested though it was told by a drunken and half- origins for the name "Moria" in the February M y th - demented old woman, I regretted that I had no p r i n t , I feel moved to point out another possible means of committing it to writing. analogue. As a C hristian, Tolkien was influenced (Graves, p. 143) by the Bible and may have regarded the coining of names with B iblical echoes as a sort of private The drunken old woman's story differs from Lewis' in j o k e . several respects. Apuleius' story is set unambiguously in In Gen. 22:2, God commands Abraham to "get thee the context of Graeco-Roman mythology, the principal divine into the land of Moriah" to offer up Isaac, and sub­ characters being Venus and her mischievous son Cupid. There sequent references (2 Sam. 24:18, 1 Chr. 21:18, are three royal sister in Apuleius' story, as in Lewis' but etc.) accordingly treat Moriah as a place of sac­ all three are beautiful; Psyche, the youngest, far outshines rifice. I don’t suggest that we take this corres­ the others in beauty, but they too are lovely. Psyche from pondence very seriously, but the parallelism is the start is a very different character from Lewis' Istra. interesting to note. The old woman calls her "simple-minded" and "silly" (Graves, Another point: has anyone compared the idea pp. 113, 115), and there is not trace of the toughness of of the Balrog with Job 12:22? Here the King James mind and body which characterize Istra. The two elder sis­ version reads, "He discovereth deep things o u t o f ters are unmistakably cruel, and distinctly jealous of what darkness, and bringeth out to light the shadow of Psyche receives from her divine husband—for they can see death." Far-fetched, perhaps, but fun. and feel her palace just as easily as she herself can. Thus Apuleius' story corresponds more closely to the tale of the Priest of Istra in Lewis' book (Ch. 21) than to the events of the book themselves. Lewis attaches great importance to the fact that Istra's 1 C. S. Lewis, T ill We Have Faces (New York: Time, Inc. 1966; orig. pub. 1956), p. 7. Subsequent references will be to this edition. 2 Robert Graves, Introd. to his transl. of The Transfor­ mations of Lucius (New York: Farrar, Straus s Giroux, 1951), p. xix. Subsequent references will be to this edition in the form "Graves, p. ." 30 palace, unlike that of Apuleius' Psyche, is invisible to You'll say I was jealous. Jealous of Psyche? o t h e r s : Not while she was mine. If you'd have gone the other way to work—if it was my eyes you had The central alteration in my own version con­ opened—you'd soon have seen how I would have sists in making Psyche's palace invisible to shown her and told her and taught her and had normal, mortal eyes—if "making" is not the her up to my level. But to hear a chit of a wrong word for something which forced itself girl who had (or ought to have had) no thought upon me, almost at my first reading of the in her that I'd not put there, setting up for a story.

Load more

  5

Copy Link