After our previous episode discussing Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, the last novel written by C. S. Lewis, we decided that we needed a little more expertise than we were able to bring to bear. To that end, we’ve invited Beth Potterveld, a graduate of Wheaton College who has volunteered with the Wade Center and studied Inklings scholarship (a group which includes Lewis as part of its focus). In this supplemental podcast we discuss some of Lewis’ history with the Psyche myth, different ways of reading the somewhat less clear Part II of the novel, and other influences in Lewis’ work.
Read the rest of this entry

In this episode of SF Crossing the Gulf, we tackle Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, the last novel written by C. S. Lewis, published in 1956.

At once more human and more mythic than his Perelandra trilogy, Lewis’s short novel of love, faith, and transformation (both good and ill) offers the reader much food for thought in a compact, impressively rich story. Less heavy-handedly Christian-allegorical than Narnia, Till We Have Faces gives us characters who remind us of people we know facing choices and difficulties we recognize. This deceptively simple book takes on new depth with each rereading.

We strongly recommend that you read this one for yourselves; we had rather divergent readings of it just between the two of us, and we’re already tempted to revisit this discussion later, possibly with a scholar in tow. There is no doubt that this is a complex and complicated story that will reward your attention.
Read the rest of this entry

It’s currently October, the spiritual heart of autumn, season of darkening skies and shivering shadows, when death and life, fantasy and reality, night and day, bleed briefly into each other to generate a sense of infinite vistas lying just beyond our ability to grasp. Or at least that’s how it unfolds in the Missouri Ozarks, my lifelong home until a couple of years ago. In 2008 my family and I relocated to Central Texas, and down here in my new native country, daytime temps are still climbing into the 80s. There’s nary a red or golden leaf in sight. The forecast for Halloween itself, the spiritual focal point of the whole month, calls for sunny skies and a high of 85. I don’t often quote Charles Schulz, but since he conceived of the Great Pumpkin, it seems appropriate under current circumstances: Rats.

Still, none of this means the season is failing to inspire its archetypal mood, a pungent emotional coloration composed of equal parts wistful longing, melancholy brooding, and shadowy fascination. And this has got me to reflecting seriously on the significance of this mood for the religion-spirituality-speculative fiction crossover arena that’s my focus here at Stained Glass Gothic. To cut to the chase: The archetypal mood that I and millions of other people have come to associate with autumn in general and October in particular touches on a peculiar emotional/spiritual upwelling that’s central to the concerns of fantasy and horror, and that I first began consciously experiencing as an early adolescent.

Read the rest of this entry