Defining and Defending the Middle Ages with C. S. Lewis

Abstract

The scholarly writings of C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) have both inspired the study of the Middle Ages and confirmed the relevance to the humanities that medieval literary texts can have for the present. He was aware that the straitjacket implied by periodisation can blind us to the universal values presented in medieval literature. Qualitative assumptions made about the (usually undefined) Middle Ages include an alienating remoteness, and also a general ignorance, especially of science and technology. Lewis drew attention to the knowledge of astronomy, for example, and pointed out that medieval technical skills in architecture, agriculture and medicine are important for us to be aware about. Three medieval works illustrate this universality with respect to technical skills (the Völundarkviða); identity and the self (the Hildebrandslied); and the popular love-song (the courtly love-lyric). Lewis cautioned against pejorative terms like ‘Dark Ages’, noted problems of perspective in assessing all pre-modern literature, and showed that earlier works have a continuing value and relevance.

Reflections on Key Issues in Human Life: Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, Dante’s Divina Commedia, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Michael Ende’s Momo, and Fatih Akın’s Soul Kitchen—Manifesto in Support of the Humanities—What Truly Matters in the End?

“…Next, I would like to present a variety of literary and also cinematographic examples from our own time and from the Middle Ages in order to illustrate how we can pragmatically handle the confrontation with a disgruntled public and an overly cost-sensitive bureaucracy and re-situate the humanities into the center of the academic universe, where they truly belong. I have addressed these questions already before in various other studies (e.g., Classen 2012aClassen , 2012bClassen , 2014aClassen , 2015Classen , 2016Classen , 2018aClassen , 2018bClassen , 2019a, and numerous colleagues have contributed to this ongoing discourse (Murdoch 2020;Münster 2020;Beal 2020), whereas here my intentions are to operate both with medieval and modern examples, including a courtly romance, a Renaissance collection of short tales, a twentieth-century novel for young readers, and a twenty-first-century movie. My critical keywords will be spirituality, transcendence, the essence of human life, purpose, dignity, and meaning.…”

“…It is this nobility of the mind and soul that the humanities aspire to, a fundamental concept expressed many times particularly in medieval literature. Consequently, separating and categorizing medieval and modern literature/movies etc., from each other serves only pragmatic, certainly not heuristic, purposes, and the more openly we approach the entire history of literature-or the arts-the more will we be graced with nuggets of wisdom that can serve us in our endeavor to shape our current and future life (Murdoch 2020). Humanities face, after all, urgent challenges resulting from the fact that we now live in the Anthropocene, which can be met constructively only if everyone contributes to the growth of our society and works toward the improvement of our world, both in material and in spiritual terms.…”

The Emergence of Rationality in the Icelandic Sagas: The Colossal Misunderstanding of the Viking Lore in Contemporary Popular Culture

“…), and then also in a militarized history, according to certain political perspectives (Elliott 2017). Of course, this fantasy concept of medieval society has not at all translated into a resurgence of the scholarly discipline, a phenomenon that has been lamented about already for quite some time (Murdoch 2020). Games and entertainment are some of the key elements which most intensively connect the current generation with the Middle Ages (Moberly and Moberly 2019), and this at the grave cost of a growing ignorance about that age and its documents, if not the egregious misuse of medieval images, narratives, symbols, ideas, and values for modern ideological purposes.…”