The Discarded Image

A book based on the lectures Lewis gave for many years at Oxford as an introduction to medieval and Renaissance studies, published by Cambridge University Press in 1964, the year after his death. It describes what Lewis calls the medieval Model: the picture of the universe, synthesised from classical, biblical and late-antique sources, that medieval and Renaissance writers took for granted. After chapters on the medieval situation and on selected materials of the classical and 'seminal' periods, including Lucan, Statius, Apuleius, Chalcidius, Macrobius, pseudo-Dionysius and Boethius, Lewis sets out the heavens and their influences, the long-lived beings between earth and sky, the earth and its inhabitants, the soul and body, and the liberal arts. An epilogue reflects on how every model of the universe answers to the questions of its age. The book is one of Lewis's most admired and most often recommended works of scholarship.