“The air of Narnia had been working upon him … and all his old battles came back to him, and his arms and fingers remembered their old skill. He was King Edmund once more.”
In this week’s wide-ranging discussion, Dr. Jason Baxter talks about fellow Medievalist C. S. Lewis’s ideas of story and history—and how those ideas matter for the education and formation of a thoroughly modern people. What can today’s “classical revival movements” learn from Lewis?
Chapters:
3:56 C. S. Lewis’s library
6:31 His theory of stories: mining ancient jewels
14:49 His theory of history: a post-Christian world
17:14 Modern man’s trouble with pre-modern texts
20:09 Embracing modernity and tradition
25:45 Making virtue attractive
33:49 How to “teach” a passion
42:45 Why a new translation of Dante
49:51 Wounded by beauty
Links:
jasonmbaxter.com featuring articles and lectures
Beauty Matters, Substack for Jason Baxter
The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason Baxter
The Divine Comedy: Inferno translated by Jason Baxter
Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College
Also on the Forum:
A Doctor, a Lawyer, and a Cop Walk into a Boys School, episode two of Heights Forum Faculty Podcast
What Fiction Is For featuring Joe Breslin
Inferno or Paradiso? On Introducing Students to the Divine Comedy featuring Jason Baxter
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