Nothing is merely a by-product of anything else. All results are intended from the first. What is subservient from one point of view is the main purpose from another. No thing or event is first or highest in a sense which forbids it to be also last and lowest. The partner who bows to Man […]
As I’m reading Paradise Lost and thinking about its relation to the Ransom Trilogy, one thing I’ve been struck by is that Milton puts Eve clearly in submission to Adam from the beginning, before the fall. Here’s part of the initial introduction to the pair. Though both Not equal, as their sex not equal seem’d; […]
Hang on to your hats for this one, folks! It’s a bit of a wild ride. And, please, if you’re not already familiar with my ideas, please read something else first! Good places to start would be With Hands Open, Something Like a Spear and Hands Open, or Musings on the Trilogy Theme. Maybe even […]
I don’t even know where to start! I finished Lewis’s Preface to Paradise Lost a couple of days ago – and started in on the poem/book – and I am amazed. Why, oh, why didn’t the people I asked about what to read to help in my analysis of Perelandra tell me to read this […]
It’s been a looong time! I won’t bore you with all the details, but kids and company and summer and starting school. Whew! I wrote back in May about a theory that Mars was holding a shepherd’s crook. It was a rabbit trail. But a productive rabbit trail! It brought yet another aspect of the […]
It has been a while since I posted anything – holidays, summer and kids, perfect weather for gardening . . . I have been working up an article on the scene in Perelandra. But I’ve wanted to get back to posting on here, so I’ll share something on another topic from Perelandra that has also been […]
Warning: This is balderdash. It’s a tangent, but I’m leaving it up as an example of the rabbit trails scholars go down sometimes. Here’s what I learned from it: Masculinity Revisited I’m finally back to writing a bit. I’ve been reading (sometimes listening) to Le Morte d’Arthur (again, Derek Jacobi is the best), Norse Mythology (Okay, […]
Yes, I missed a week. I’ve had a nasty annoying cold and been forced to take up napping to banish it, which has consumed the time normally devoted to blogging. Children must be fed, colds or no, so blogging had to go. The obvious next step in my research would be to look at the […]
C.S. Lewis was a smart man. (Understatement of the year, I know.) He knew that in insisting on hierarchy as a natural and good part of creation, he would be perceived as prioritizing the masculine over the feminine. One way he countered this was by making the Green Lady such an attractive person, by making […]
I am so, so, so excited to be getting to the really fun part! This is where I believe Lewis came to what was, for him, the crux of the matter – the essential difference between masculine and feminine. Ready? “He thinks that the first held in his hand something like a spear, but the […]