Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold

Personne ecrit comme lui...

This is better than ANYTHING else by Lewis. Hey, I love Narnia, especially The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But this is set in an ancient, mythic setting. The theme is jealousy and redemption. What could be better? Read this in combination with The Golden Ass by Apuleius, tr. Robert Graves. Different as night and day, but worth reading together.

To see my self in your eyes... An amazing book...

C.S. Lewis adamantly defended his works against readers' and critics' propensity to find allegories within the subtext. Still, having read other Lewis stories, I can't help but see the influence of Christianity and ideas of faith seep through the re-telling of a classic myth. Still, more than anything, Lewis wants readers to come to books without presuppositions about meanings. ...more

C.S. Lewis adamantly defended his works against readers' and critics' propensity to find allegories within the subtext. Still, having read other Lewis stories, I can't help but see the influence of Christianity and ideas of faith seep through the re-telling of a classic myth. Still, more than anything, Lewis wants readers to come to books without presuppositions about meanings. This was hard for me as I continually tried to make parallels between the characters and figures/ideas from Christianity. This tactic fails, but when I finally relinquished my attempts, I found that the story was filled with truths, magnificently depicted by many figures like Psyche, Bardia, the Fox, Orual, Ungit, etc. One idea that I'd like to explore more is the idea of Bardia and Fox being representative of the Jew and the Greek that Paul talks about in some of his epistles. I also liked the "temptation" imagery that we see Psyche go through at the end. If anything, she is the Christ-figure, but I wouldn't claim a perfect analogy there. Beautifully written and intriguing. I'd recommend it to anyone.   hide