Monday, June 29, 2009

10 Books A Day: #67

The Discarded Image: An Introduction To Medieval And Renaissance Literature...C. S. Lewis...Canto

Studies In Medieval And Renaissance Literature...C. S. Lewis...Canto

Studies In Words...C. S. Lewis...Canto

The Allegory Of Love...C. S. Lewis...A Galaxy Book/Oxford University Press

A Preface To Paradise Lost...C. S. Lewis...Oxford University Press

On Stories, And Other Essays On Literature...C. S. Lewis...Harcourt Brace

An Experiment In Criticism...C. S. Lewis...Cambridge University Press

English Literature In The Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama...C. S. Lewis...Oxford At The Clarendon Press

C. S. Lewis: A Companion And Guide...Walter Hooper...HarperCollins

The Quotable Lewis...ed. Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root...Tyndale

The C. S. Lewis Encyclopedia...Colin Duriez...Azure

The Joyful Christian: 127 Readings...C. S. Lewis, selected from his works...Collier

Around The Year With C. S. Lewis And His Friends...Compiled by Kathryn Lindskoog...C. R. Gibson

George MacDonald: 365 Readings...Edited With A Preface By C. S. Lewis...Collier


The first eight books are literary criticism by Lewis; the Hooper and Duriez books are encyclopedic guides to his life and work, the Hooper being more complete and in depth; the other four are compilations of quotes and "readings." The Lindskoog volume is a "book of days," basically a calendar with daily quotes and "happened this day" entries, with space for personal journal entries, bound in book form.

Although all the books are good, the gem in today's list is The Discarded Image. It has the honor to be the last work of C. S. Lewis that was prepared for publication by his own hand; it is the ordering and editing of a series of influential lectures he worked on during his entire career at Oxford and Cambridge. It is a straightforward and imaginative look at the Model of the Universe as constructed by the Medieval mind, and serves as a corrective to many modern misconceptions people have of the times. Perhaps the most stunning is the revelation that the idea of a geocentric universe, with the Earth at the center, did not argue for the Earth's importance, but for it's gross, lowly position, the furthest away from the perfections of the Empyrean.

Book Count: 858.

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