The Discarded Image

Content Warning: This section includes descriptions of racist attitudes and biases put forth by the author.

The Discarded Image is based on a series of lectures that C. S. Lewis gave while teaching at Oxford. Lewis collected his lectures into book format to provide an introductory framework to anyone wishing to learn about medieval literature. The field of medieval literature is often difficult to understand because the medieval conception of the world was so different from the modern one. Lewis hopes that this series of essays will provide a guide that will deepen students’ understanding and give them context when they begin to tackle literature from the Medieval Era.

Lewis opens The Discarded Image by explaining where prevalent ideas found in medieval literature come from. He differentiates medieval beliefs from the beliefs of cultures he describes as “savage,” arguing that “[s]avage beliefs are thought to be the spontaneous response of a human group to its environment, a response made principally by the imagination” (10). He contends that medieval beliefs were different, and that while they often at a glance appear to be like “savage” ones, these beliefs were in fact building on earlier ideas that were originally developed by writers in ancient Greece and ancient Rome.