Oxford Medieval Renaissance scholar C. S. Lewis wrote that a true literary myth uses a temporal series of images to build up in the reader's mind a single atemporal intuitive impression of the relationships of Man, Nature, and Super-Nature. / This dissertation demonstrates that underlying Lewis' own Space Trilogy is a literal image, one which is picturable. The Trilogy thus represents a literary "icon," both in form (as an artistic portrayal of a single object of contemplation) and in function (as a tool for religious devotion). / Lewis accomplishes this effect by conferring upon every detail of his stories a meaning beyond its immediate role in the storyline. Such significance is assigned from a modified medieval cosmology. / These clusters of details are found to align themselves along three mutually perpendicular coordinate axes of North-South, East-West, and Up-Down. When they are plotted as vectors in a three-dimensional abstract "literary space," a single figure emerges, one which also appears several places in Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. / This picture is that of a central tree in a walled circular garden which forms the summit of a mountain. This first iteration is of a much more elaborate design constructed according to the medieval cosmological principles of the inversion of hierarchy, the reversal of perspective, and the macrocosm in the microcosm. / I believe that, for craftsmanship and self-consistency, C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy represents in myth a parallel achievement to Dante's Divine Comedy in allegory. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-04, Section: A, page: 1340. / Major Professor: Charles W. Swain. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76386 |
| Contributors | Martin, Robert Edwin., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 531 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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