Bareface: A Guide to C.S. Lewis's Last Novel

272 Pages·2004·0.655 MB·English

by  Doris T. Myers

Bareface
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Bareface
A Guide to C. S. Lewis’s Last Novel
Doris T. Myers
University of Missouri Press
Columbia and London
Copyright © 2004 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 08 07 06 05 04
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Myers, Doris T.
Bareface : a guide to C.S. Lewis’s last novel / Doris T. Myers.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN0-8262-1497-5 (alk. paper)
1. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898–1963. Till we have faces.
2. Psyche (Greek deity) in literature. 3. Eros (Greek deity) in
literature. 4. Mythology, Greek, in literature. 5. Psychology in
literature. I. Title.
PR6023.E926T5436 2004
823'.912—dc22 2003024715
™ This paper meets the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.
Designer: Jennifer Cropp
Typesetter: Phoenix Type, Inc.
Printer and binder: The Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group
Typefaces:Palatino, Diotima, and Caligraphy
For
Tom,
Thomas,
and Liz
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction:“Bareface”—Why a Book about a Book? 1
Part I. Chapter by Chapter
Book One. The Way It All Happened
Chapter 1. Welcome to Glome 13
Chapter 2. Enter Psyche 19
Chapter 3. Hard Times in Glome 23
Chapter 4. Psyche the Accursed 28
Chapter 5. The Condemnation of Psyche 31
Chapter 6. Fighting for Psyche 38
Chapter 7. The Night before the Offering 42
Chapter 8. Psyche Is Gone 46
Chapter 9. Life without Psyche 51
Chapter 10. Over to the Other Side 56
Chapter 11. Mixed Emotions 61
Chapter 12. Guesses—And a Glimpse 65
Chapter 13. Orual’s Soul-Searching 70
Chapter 14. Back to the Mountain 74
Chapter 15. Meeting the God 78
Chapter 16. Waiting and Building 83
Chapter 17. The Queen Grows Stronger 88
Chapter 18. The Eve of the Battle 93
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viii Contents
Chapter 19. Triumph and Sorrow 98
Chapter 20. The Queen’s Resumé 104
Chapter 21. What Happened in Essur 112
Book Two. What Really Happened
Chapter 1. Reality Check 117
Chapter 2. Who Is Ungit? 121
Chapter 3. The Book at the Bottom of the Soul 127
Chapter 4. Face to Face at Last 132
Conclusion: The Soul’s Journey 137
Part II. Further In
Apuleius and Lewis 145
Chronology of Lewis’s Life 154
Glome, AReal Place—More or Less 163
The Holy—Lewis and Otto 168
James and Conversion 175
Myth—ADefinition 183
Names in Glome 188
The New Psychology 192
Pagan Religion 204
Plato—Banished from Glome 210
Stoicism—The Faith of the Fox 214
Time in Till We Have Faces 219
Part III. Glossary 227
Further Reading 235
Works Cited 237
Index 245
Acknowledgments
This book grew out of a paper presented in May 1998, at the inter-
national symposium in Erlangen, Germany, in celebration of the
centenary of C. S. Lewis’s birth. It was sponsored by the Inklings
Gesellschaft für Literatur und Ästhetik together with the Institut für
Anglistik and Amerikanistik and Institut für Systematische Theolo-
gie der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, and
the papers from the symposium were later published in the 1998
edition of the Inklings Jahrbuch.At a (much) later stage, portions of
this manuscript were presented to the Southern California C. S. Lewis
Society’s Twenty-Eighth Anniversary Summer Workshop (July 29–
August 2, 2002). I am especially grateful to Dietrich Petzold and
Edie Dougherty for organizing these two opportunities to meet and
talk about C. S. Lewis.
Peter J. Schakel and Paul A. Olson read the manuscript and took
time from their own heavy publication schedules to offer extensive
suggestions and generous encouragement. The comments of the
readers for the University of Missouri Press were especially help-
ful. I am also grateful for the encouragement and editorial help of
Beverly Jarrett, Clair Willcox, Jane Lago, and Sara Davis.
It is almost impossible to do research on C. S. Lewis without the
gracious, patient assistance of the staff of the Marion E. Wade Center
at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. As always, I am especially
grateful to Christopher Mitchell and Marjorie Lamp Mead.
Mary Kingsbury commented on the manuscript from an Orual-
loving engineer’s point of view; Rosamond K. Sprague commented
on Greek and Roman agriculture; and the Rev. Canon Louise Blan-
chard offered me friendship and personal guidance throughout.
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