LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 1 The Glory of the Ideal

       The Allegory of Love

      Norman Cantor, former Rhodes Scholar, Fulbright Professor and medievalist at New York University, wrote Inventing the Middle Ages in which he considers the influence of twenty twentieth-century medieval scholars. By his standards of assessment, he places C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien at the top of the list. He observes, “Of all medievalists of the twentieth century, Lewis and Tolkien have gained incomparably the greatest audience, although 99.9 percent of their readers have never looked at their scholarly work.”⁸ And, of Lewis, he notes that “He had established his reputation as a leading medieval literary historian with The Allegory of Love (1936).”⁹ Before the publication of this book, Cantor says:

      No one in the English-speaking world had up to then the learning, insight, and courage to attempt such a sophisticated definition of high medieval culture. There had been valuable discussions of particular poets and treatises on philosophy and theology. But Lewis tried to define the essence of twentieth-century literary imagination and did so in a formula that has withstood the challenge of a half century of research and reflection.¹⁰

      In fact, Cantor observes that “Lewis saw more deeply into medieval culture than the neo-Thomists did.” Here it is worthy to note that while many of the interpreters of the development of intellectual history tend to follow the philosophers and theologians, Lewis propounds the merit of following the ideas that develop along literary lines. Furthermore, the medieval imagination—as Lewis summed it up near the end of his life—“is not a transforming imagination like Wordsworth’s or a penetrating imagination like Shakespeare’s. It is a realizing imagination.” Cantor adds that while “Lewis left a great many questions unanswered or even unasked about the nature of the Middle Ages … what he had to say was persuasive and largely incontestable.”¹¹

      The Allegory of Love is Lewis’s monumental work about the medieval love allegory, and he traces developments in the literature of that age, moving from the celebration of adultery to literature that elevates the Christian ideal of marriage and holds it in high regard. He looks at some of the most significant medieval texts in order to mark this development. There is much of ancillary value in Lewis’s exploration, but this development toward a Christian view of marriage was Lewis’s main point in The Allegory of Love, and it is the thread we will follow in this chapter.

      Margaret Hannay suggests that Lewis’s point in The Allegory of Love was to refute five misunderstandings of Spenser current in literary circles. These are an overemphasis on political allusions, language, the allegorical nature of the work, Protestantism, and moralism. While Lewis does discuss these matters, they are not the point of his book, and such clarifications would not have established his reputation as a literary historian the way The Allegory of Love, in fact, did. A closer read, with an eye toward grasping the overall reach and flow of what Lewis posited, can be found in literary scholar Stephen Yandell’s essay on the text. He observes that Lewis’s point, building to a crescendo throughout the medieval courtly tradition, is, for Spenser “to employ the allegorical form masterfully as a way of showing the inner complexities associated with passionate, Christian, married love.”¹²

      The thesis of The Allegory of Love sets forth how the Christian concept of marriage was elevated gradually and idealized through the romantic literature of the Middle Ages. What Lewis says may have significant application in light of some of the current challenges to marriage confronting our culture today; however, applications to current circumstances will have to be drawn inferentially. Certainly, Lewis could not have anticipated the state of affairs surrounding the present interest in same-sex attraction. Nothing in the history of thought and culture could have allowed him to expect such a thing.

      The absence of comment by Lewis about same-sex attraction does not mean that he was unaware of challenges that faced traditional marriage in the past. In fact, the frequency with which he writes about marriage provides much grist for thought. Most prominently, Lewis detects one particular challenge to marriage as evidenced in the Middle Ages. It was the age of the Crusades and chivalry, an age characterized by the idealization of knights in their armor, quests, and the need to rescue damsels in distress. In this time, marriage was threatened most of all by adultery.

       Medieval Allegory and Courtly Love

      As Lewis begins his exploration of the medieval allegory, he writes that “Humanity does not pass through phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind. Whatever we have been, in some sort we are still.”¹³ Elsewhere, he adds, “But surely arrested development consists not in refusing to lose old things but in failing to add new things?”¹⁴ The maturation process demands a certain rootedness in the past with its traditions and accumulated knowledge. But, if growth is occurring, there must also be new ground explored and new horizons reached. While a new experience may provide a challenge to one’s conceptual framework, nevertheless, out of this challenge, development can occur. Theology has always progressed whenever heresies occurred. These called for change in the then-held conceptual framework. This fact is supported by the history of the Church Councils. Heresies must be answered, and these answers led to more robust theology. This is no less the case in the way human thought has developed through the ages on any given topic, not the least of which is marriage. When understanding increases and progress occurs, its development is likely to be mirrored by the literature of the age.

      In The Allegory of Love Lewis writes of continuity and change. At least two kinds of change may be observed. First, a change of kind where the present conceptual framework has been falsified by unbending realities and the abiding paradigm must be abandoned for one better. Second, a change of degree where new data demands adjustment in currently held beliefs without the need to abandon them—a tree does not have to give up its interior rings just because it adds new ones—yet, these beliefs must be adjusted to keep up with the data. Put another way, Lewis’s biggest idea, one that can be traced in all of his books, is that “reality is iconoclastic.”¹⁵

      The iconoclast breaks idols. I may have an image of God (or anything else for that matter); the new image may come after reading a book, listening to a lecture, or following a conversation. New pieces of the puzzle have come together to form a clearer image; but if I hold too tightly to the present image it will become an idol and an obstacle to growth. Lewis reminds readers that God, in his mercy, always kicks out the walls of temples we build for him because he wants to give us more of himself.¹⁶ We want a clearer grasp of the world where we live. Even the truths we hold are subject to degrees of change. We have yet to plumb the depths of any truth we presently grasp; nor have we imagined all the possible applications of any given truth we currently know. We will never have a last word, or complete understanding of anything, but this does not mean we cannot have a sure word about some things. All truths ought to be held with this humility and honesty. This type of change, one of degree, is chronicled in The Allegory of Love.

      Additionally, these attempts to grasp this continuity and change are destined to affect our interior life. We respond to our world not only by means of reason, but also with the heart. We are creatures of passion as well as intellect. Lewis notes that in medieval times allegory became the literary form developed to speak of and depict the interior life. He writes, “The inner life, and specially the life of love, religion, and spiritual adventure, has therefore always been the field of true allegory; for here there are intangibles which only allegory can fix and reticences which only allegory can overcome.”¹⁷ Lewis also observed, “The function of allegory is not to hide but to reveal, and it is properly used only for that which cannot be said, or so well said, in literal speech.”¹⁸

      The subject of courtly love filled much of the literature of the Middle

Скачать книгу