Lehigh Preserve Institutional Repository A Mythical Approach to Christian Orthodoxy: C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. Wilson, Sharon Lee 1977 Find more at https://preserve.lib.lehigh.edu/ This document is brought to you for free and open access by Lehigh Preserve. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator of Lehigh Preserve. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Mythical Approach to Christian Orthodoxy: C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy by Sharon Lee Wilson A Thesis Presented to the Graduate Committee of Lehigh University in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts in English Lehigh University 1977 ProQuest Number: EP76550 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest EP76550 Published by ProQuest LLC (2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 This thesis is accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English. December 6, 1977 (date) Cnairman of the Department 11 Table of Contents Page Abstract 1 I Myth: Lewis's Stronghold 3 II The Literary Qualities of Myth 9 III The Spiritual Implication of Myth 17 IV Lewis's Myth of "Deep Heaven" 24 v Out of .the Silent Planet: Ransom Steps Into The Myth 33 VI Perelandra: The Battle Begins 43 VII That Hideous Strength: A New Beginning 52 Bibliography 63 in A Mythical Approach to Christian Orthodoxy: C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy by Sharon Wilson Abstract In an attempt to communicate the vital principles of Christian orthodoxy to the skeptics of his age, C.S. Lewis approaches philosophical thought artistically, by his development of a unified concept of the place of myth in literature. Myth, according to Lewis, represents an ultimate and absolute reality; myth in literature repre- sents a shadowy reflection of that reality. Although un- focussed, this reflection is almost always capable of con- veying the meaning and power implicit in the myth -itself. Hence my study is an analysis of the artist's conception and use of myth in his criticism, theology, and fiction. The first three chapters of my thesis examine Lewis's assertion that mythical images in literature are an ex- pression of the basic elements in man's spiritual ex- perience. Moreover, it is the vestigial elements in myth / •■•, that are essential to man's understanding of truth, not necessarily the literal images embodied in myth. The last four chapters deal with the Space Trilogy, in which the author's view of myth is graphically pre- sented. Out of the Silent Planet concerns false myth, em- bodied in Weston's quest for Creative Evolution and secu- larism in society. Perelandra deals with genuine myth and provides for the hero, Dr. Ransom, a confirmation in Christian experience. In his struggle with evil, personified in Weston, he comes to understand the true implications of man's Fall and the mystery of atonement. That Hideous Strength is a speculative notion of the author's, perhaps best described as emergent myth. Earth becomes the center of activity as the forces of good com- bine to rescue her from evil. Lewis's fiction illuminates his personal philosophy; myth is a manifestation of universal reality. Truth first appears in mythical form, and by a process of focussing finally becomes Incarnate as History. In other words, "myth became fact." o Chapter I Myth: Lewis's Stronghold Why does a successful literary critic decide to write fiction of his own? While attempting to fulfill his creative impulses, says John Fitzpatrick, he may also be seeking to fulfill some didactic purpose. The critic may choose to reveal his message through fiction in order to approach skeptical readers. He may even hope to prove his theories in the very process of putting them into a different form. Whatever motivates him, a critic who seeks to become an artist cannot help becoming his own critic as well. Through his artistry he will affirm or deny the validity of his theories and provide illustra- tions that support or weaken his case. The works of C.S. Lewis exemplify an artistic ap- proach to philosophical thought, for much of his fiction reflects ideas advanced in his criticism and theology. Resounding throughout his works~\is a firm embrace of Christianity, and the unity of those works is manifested in the artist's sense of "myth." Judging from the torrents of criticism, there is a great deal of confusion concerning the nature of myth. John Fitzpatrick, "From Fact to Fantasy: A Study of C.S. Lewis' Use of Myth," M.A. Thesis (New York: City College of the City University of New York, 1972), p. 2. While some scholars such as Gilbert Murray and F.M. Cornford consider it the origin upon which religious ritual is based, others consider it preterlogical, or the confused memory of such ritual. Charles Moorman concludes, however, that neither the origin nor the nature of myth is important, but rather how it functions in literature, how the artist uses it "to convert the raw materials of chaotic experience into a finished artistic * 2 work that represents an ordered view of that experience." Thus the focus of this essay is Lewis's conception and use of myth. It is essential to recognize that Lewis provides us with no concrete theory of myth; for "theory," says Fitzpatrick, "implies a systematic working of all rele- 3 vant factors into a coherent whole," and Lewis never bothered to do that. In The Personal Heresy: A Con- /" troversy, he states, \ 'V The most characteristic contents of vv literary utterances are stories — ^ accounts of events that did not take place. The primary value of these is that they are interesting. But why the interest, and in what dif- ferent ways, and what permanent results they produce in the reader, I do not profess to know. Oddly enough, criticism has discussed this very little. Between Aristotle and the 2 Charles Moorman, Arthurian Triptych: Mythic Materials in Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, and T.S. Eliot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), p. 7. 3 Fitzpatrick, p. 4. 4 modern mythographical school of Miss Maud Bodkin, Professor Wilson Knight, and Professor D.G. James, we find al- most nothing.4 In 1947, Lewis describes Boccaccio's attempt to explain the fascination of myth in terms of allegory and Jung's doctrine of Archtypes. Both explanations, he asserts, are inadequate. He later states: It would seem from the reactions it produces, that the mythopoeic is rather, for good or ill, a mode of imagination which does something to us at a deep level. If some seem to go to it in al- most compulsive need, others seem to be in terror of what they may meet there.^ Only in 1961 did Lewis devote so much as a chapter to a formal discussion of myth, and his essay, from An Experiment in Criticism, remains his largest con- tribution. Why such reticence from a man who restructured his entire life because certain myths came to appear to him as fact as well, a man who contributed many insights on myth throughout his commentaries on literatur-e and theology, and who is considered by many critics to have 4 C.S. Lewis and E.M.W. Tillyard, The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 120. 5 Lewis, "On Stories," in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1966), p. 3. 6Ibid.., "On Science Fiction," p. 72. had a rare capacity for myth-making. His silence, says Fitzpatrick, was both real and deliberate, for Lewis had too much respect for the evanescent and numinous qualities of myth to attempt to explain them away. He • . saw through a mythical lens things that might otherwise have gone unseen. He sought to avoid the error of excessive concern with the act of seeing and with mere states of mind; he learned to concentrate on the vision itself, on the object of the strange desire that the best myths arouse and not on his merely subjective response to it.^ Yet Lewis1s ideas about myth permeate his works and provide a source of value for those works. The in- fluence of myth on his life and fiction is apparent, for example, in Surprised By Joy, subtitled The Shape of My Early Life. This work is a conversion story identifying nature and myth as the two most prominant forces that caused Lewis to return to Christianity. The title, Surprised By Joyf originates from one of Wordsworth's sonnets, and the work attempts to capture Lewis's recogni- tion of a longing for something completely outside him- self. Though the longing speaks more of a romantic re- ft sponse to nature than of a truly mythical experience, Charles Moorman states that this very aspect of Romantic- ism has often been associated with myth. He cites Wordsworth's words, "earth and every common sight ... seem appareled in celestial light"-to describe the p 7 Fitzpatrick, p. 6. 8Ibid., p. 10. feelings that he believes primitive myths try to re- 9 capture. Lewis describes his experience in the following passage: As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery.