REASON

and

IMAGINATION

in

C. S. LEWIS

A Study of Till We Have Faces

Peter J. Schakel

WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY

grand rapids, michigan

Copyright © 1984 by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, Mich. 49503

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Schakel, Peter J.

Reason and imagination in C.S. Lewis

Includes bibliographical references.

1. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898–1963. Till we have faces. 2. Cupid and Psyche (Tale)—History and criticism. 3. Reason in literature. 4. Imagination in literature. I. Title.

PR6023.E926T5437 1984 823′.912 84-1482

ISBN 0-8028-1998-2

To my Mother and Father,

with deep affection and appreciation

Contents

Preface

SECTION ONE—TILL WE HAVE FACES: THE WORK ITSELF

I Introduction: The Background

II Part I, Chapters 1–2: Methods, Motives, Materialism

III Chapters 3–5: Of Divine Mysteries and Sacrifice

IV Chapters 6–7: Love and Longing

V Chapters 8–11: Believing and Perceiving

VI Chapters 12–15: Seeing and Knowing

VII Chapters 16–20: Loving, Hating, Hiding

VIII Chapter 21: The Myth and the Retelling

IX Part II, Chapters 1–4: “Real Life is Meeting”

SECTION TWO—TILL WE HAVE FACES: THE WORK IN CONTEXT

X Poet of the Teens and Twenties: The Struggling Imagination

XI Critic and Story-Writer of the Thirties: Imagination as Servant

XII Apologist of the Forties: Reason as Master

XIII Autobiographer of the Fifties: Reason and Imagination Reconciled

XIV Personal Writer of the Sixties: Reason and Imagination United

Table for Converting Page References to Chapter Numbers

Acknowledgments

RESEARCH for and the writing of this book were made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar—I am particularly grateful to its director, Alasdair MacIntyre, for his encouragement and support—and a Faculty Development Grant and sabbatical leave from Hope College.

I was given permission by C. S. Lewis PTE Limited to quote from two unpublished letters by Lewis and from his unpublished diary. Owen Barfield kindly allowed me to quote from an unpublished lecture. Portions of the book were published previously in Mythlore and VII: An Anglo-American Literary Review; my thanks to the editors for allowing me to reprint them here. I have, in the book, modified considerably the positions taken in the article in VII.

I am indebted to a number of people who read parts of or the entire manuscript and made valuable suggestions for its improvement: Tom Andrews, John Cox, Paul Ford, Douglas Mantz, and Merold Westphal; from Peter Macky I learned a great deal about Lewis’s use of imagination and from Peter Kreeft a great deal about Lewis’s use of reason. I owe an especially large debt to my colleague Charles Huttar, who read the manuscript at various stages and was a continual source of encouragement, information, suggestions, and corrections.

As a hunt-and-peck typist, I am very thankful to my wife Karen, to Dee Bakker, and to Bev Kindig, who typed parts ...