Episode 145: The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: A Conversation with Jason M. Baxter
On The Literary Life Podcast this week, our hosts Angelina Stanford, Cindy Rollins, and Thomas Banks sit down for a special conversation with Jason Baxter, author of The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis. Jason is a speaker, writer, and college professor who writes primarily on medieval thought and is especially interested in Lewis\u2019 ideas. You can find out more about him and his books at JasonMBaxter.com.
Our hosts and Jason discuss a wide range of ideas, including the values of literature, the sacramental view of reality, why it is important to understand medieval thought, the \u201cproblem\u201d of paganism in Lewis\u2019 writings, and how to approach reading ancient and medieval literature.
Be back next week when we will begin digging into Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula together and learning more about this late Victorian Gothic novel. It\u2019s not what you might think!
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Commonplace Quotes:My part has been merely that of Walter Scott\u2019s Old Mortality, who busied himself in clearing the moss, and bringing back to light the words, on the gravestones of the dead who seemed to him to have served humanity. This needs to be done and redone, generation after generation, in a world where there persists always a strong tendency to read newer writers, not because they are better, but because they are newer. The moss grows fast, and ceaselessly.
F. L. Lucas
It is the memory of time that makes us old; remembering eternity makes us young again.
Statford Caldecott
It is my settled conviction that in order to read old Western literature aright, you must suspend most of the responses and unlearn most of the habits you have acquired in reading modern literature.
C. S. Lewis, from \u201cDe Descriptione Temporum\u201d
VictoryWhat then is the good of\u2013what is even the defense for\u2013occupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feeling which we should try to avoid in our own person?\u2026The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves\u2026[In] reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.
C. S. Lewis
by C. S. Lewis
Roland is dead, Cuchulain\u2019s crest is low,
The battered war-rear wastes and turns to rust,
And Helen\u2019s eyes and Iseult\u2019s lips are dust
And dust the shoulders and the breasts of snow.
The faerie people from our woods are gone,
No Dryads have I found in all our trees,
No Triton blows his horn about our seas
And Arthur sleeps far hence in Avalon.
The ancient songs they wither as the grass
And waste as doth a garment waxen old,
All poets have been fools who thought to mould
A monument more durable than brass.
For these decay: but not for that decays
The yearning, high, rebellious spirit of man
That never rested yet since life began
From striving with red Nature and her ways.
Now in the filth of war, the baresark shout
Of battle, it is vexed. And yet so oft
Out of the deeps, of old, it rose aloft
That they who watch the ages may not doubt.
Though often bruised, oft broken by the rod,
Yet, like the phoenix, from each fiery bed
Higher the stricken spirit lifts its head
And higher-till the beast become a god.
Beauty in the Word by Stratford Caldecott
An Experiment in Criticism by C. S. Lewis
The Discarded Image by C. S. Lewis
The Art of Living: Four Eighteenth Century Minds by F. L. Lucas
Transposition by C. S. Lewis
The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis
Til We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis
The Divine Comedy by Dante
The Life of St. Francis of Assisi by St. Bonaventure
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
Confessions by St. Augustine
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