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Chapter 1 - part 1

The final book in Lewis' theological science fiction Space Trilogy.

Chapter 1 - part 1

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 8th, 2008, 11:03 pm

Last edited by Kanakaberaka on October 14th, 2008, 4:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
so it goes...
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Postby rusmeister » September 9th, 2008, 12:59 am

"Eh? Two views? There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one."
Bill "The Blizzard" Hingest - That Hideous Strength
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Postby a_hnau » September 9th, 2008, 8:52 pm

I'd understood the French as "So - it [the plan i.e. to use Alcasan's head] goes forward"?
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Re: Chapter 1 - part 1

Postby a_hnau » September 9th, 2008, 9:19 pm

The Donne is fascinating, I'd not read the whole before but it seems full of allusions in the context of Lewis's novel; you could potentially tie it to the themes of the novel phrase by phrase or significant word. Particularly the theme of the various heavens is of course explicit in the Trilogy. Some suggestions as to how the poem ties up to THS;

- 'centric' (l. 2); in the medieval model paradoxically God, who is on the 'outside' of the spheres, is their real centre - I think Lewis makes this reversal explicit in The Discarded Image. So God is at the centre of love, and Mark and Jane only achieve love as it's supposed to be when they are brought to a point of centring on him at the end of THS.

- the play (I think) on 'get' as [be]get; if one loves, one generally begets; the alchemist's pot is 'pregnant' but it does not beget, he does not get (obtain), the elixir of life (along with the philosopher's stone, the two main aims of alchemy). Of course Jane is not planning to 'beget', 'not for a very long time', and her marriage to Mark does not seem to 'beget' the life she was expecting.

- love is 'imposture' and (pessimistic this) what lovers dream, like what the alchemist dreams, is impossible and they settle for second best, some 'odoriferous thing'. Certainly Jane is considering lowering her expectations, but crucially at the end of the book rediscovers them - in Maleldil, the dreams are not vain.

- [the mind which] 'he in her angelic finds' - this certainly echoes Mark's reflections on Jane towards the end of the book.

- 'the spheres' of course, as experienced as St Anne's, contrasted with 'rude hoarse minstrelsy' - the coarse banter at Belbury.

Probably there's much more in there, I know little about Donne.
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Well Donne

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 10th, 2008, 5:12 am

so it goes...
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Postby Stanley Anderson » September 11th, 2008, 4:29 pm

…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.
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He's a clown, that Charlie Brown

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 14th, 2008, 9:55 pm

so it goes...
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Re: He's a clown, that Charlie Brown

Postby a_hnau » September 15th, 2008, 6:02 pm

Probably jumping the gun here, but I did a Web search on Distributivism (on which there is an excellent Wikipedia article) and found a link to this article;



which is a very entertaining debate, chaired by Hilaire Belloc, between G K Chesterton and [presume George] Bernard Shaw. Think the participants here will enjoy it.
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On to part 2...

Postby Kanakaberaka » September 15th, 2008, 7:41 pm

Thanks for the link a_hnau. But I was going to include the subject of Distributism as a central theme for part 2 of chapter 1. No problem though. You can always repost this link when I post that part of the study later this evening. BTW : I was unable to view the link. Maybe it's just me.
so it goes...
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Re: Chapter 1 - part 1

Postby jo » December 7th, 2009, 8:33 pm

I have actually just finished a reread of an autobiography from the 30s and 40s and the writer makes the point that amongst young people at that time, church going was not very prevelant. So yes, I don't think that it is unusual for Jane not to have attended a service for a long time until her wedding.

One thing that does contextualise the scene, however, is the fact that Jane had evidently given up work on her marriage, despite the fact that the was not expecting a child and did not intend to be. In the forties, this was the usual thing for middle class women to do and, indeed, in many professions a married woman was legally forced to give up her position, whether she wished to or not.

The first thing I see about Jane is her dis-satisfaction - her boredom. She can't settle to her thesis and she has no 'other' work to keep her occupied. Already, though a very new wife, criticisms of her husband are entering her mind... something which coloured my, at least, thoughts of her before I even 'met' him in the novel.
"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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