The Chronicles of Narnia (A Course by Kelly Cumbee)

The Chronicles of Narnia have been enjoyed by adults and children alike since they were first published
in the 1950s. But our understanding of how stories work, as well as our expectations of what’s
appropriate in a series written by a Christian for children, have changed in the decades since then,
and this poses a problem for many adult readers. C.S. Lewis has been accused of things ranging
from sexism and racism to bad theology. In addition, many parents are concerned about the
presence of magic, witches, and even pagan gods in a story meant for Christian children. All these
objections arise from a fundamental misunderstanding of the literary tradition within which Lewis
was writing.

And because Lewis was drawing on the same literary tradition that Edmund Spenser drew on in his
romantic epic, The Faerie Queene, any accusation that has been leveled against Lewis and The Chronicles
of Narnia can be leveled against Spenser and The Faerie Queene.

Misreading the Chronicles will cause you to misread The Faerie Queene. The good news is that learning
to read the Chronicles rightly will open up The Faerie Queene as well as other medieval romances.
Kelly Cumbee will lead you through the Chronicles in the order in which Lewis first wrote them (hint:
it’s not what you may think) showing you why this is the best way to experience Narnia, and how it
will help you enter Spenser’s Faerieland. She will describe the medieval romance tradition which
Lewis was drawing on—its conventions, stock characters, and typical scenes. These elements work
together to create an imaginative experience that is the antidote to modernity’s poison of cynicism.
This semester-long class is designed with adults in mind, but older teens who are ready to delve into
literary theory are also welcome.

Tuesdays, 1:00-2:30 pm Eastern Time, beginning February 28, 2023

Seeking the Discarded Image: Man (A Mini-Class by Kelly Cumbee)

Note: The class will be conducted using Canvas as our virtual classroom, which includes a discussion forum. Before class begins, you will receive a link to enroll in Canvas. Click the link to login to the virtual classroom, which will have everything you need for the course.

C.S. Lewis says it is “worth while to spend some labour on ‘putting ourselves back’ into the universe which our ancestors believed themselves to inhabit. What their work means to us after we have done so appears to me not only more accurate (more like what they intended) but also more interesting and nourishing and delightful.”

In the first two parts of this series, we looked at the Heavens and at Nature. In this, we will discuss the medieval understanding of what it means to be a human and what our place in the created order is. Why do medieval stories (including histories) mingle fact and fiction as if they were the same thing? Do the words “temperament” and “complexion” mean the same thing to the medievals as they do to us? Why is man called a “microcosm,” and what do the Seven Liberal Arts have to do with any of this?

In the first class, we will see what the journey up Mount Purgatory reveals about the human soul. In the second and third classes, we’ll read together Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest in order to see how these works embody the medieval idea of what it means to be a well-ordered human being.

This course is part of a series of mini-classes on Medieval Cosmology. The classes may be taken in any order.

This is a three-session class.

Instructor: Kelly Cumbee

Class 1: Dante’s Purgatory

Class 2: C.S. Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy

Class 3: Shakespeare’s The Tempest

****All classes are recorded and available to students to watch at their own pace.****

Seeking the Discarded Image: The Heavens (a mini-class by Kelly Cumbee)

Note: This class is completed, but you may work through the course at your own pace. After you purchase the class, you will receive a link to the virtual classroom.

Instructor: Kelly Cumbee

A key element to entering Medieval and Renaissance literature in this way is understanding their model of the cosmos—when they talk about “the heavens,” and they talk about it a LOT, they do not mean what we mean by the word “space.” The modern meaning of “space” does not exist in medieval literature because, as Lewis says, “the thing meant did not exist for the human mind. The drama of existence was not performed against any such forbidding backcloth. There was no abyss. Man looked up at a patterned, populous, intricate, finite cosmos; a builded thing, not a wilderness; ‘heaven’ or ‘spheres,’ not ‘space.’ ” As we seek to recover an understanding of medieval cosmology in order to increase our ability to enter into and delight in Medieval and Renaissance literature and their modern descendants, we often don’t know what we’re looking for.

In the first class, Kelly Cumbee will map out the celestial spheres and what they meant to the medieval imagination, and will walk you through them using Dante’s Paradise as a guide. In the second and third classes, we will read togther Lewis’s Prince Caspian and Shakespeare’s Macbeth in order to see how those works embody medieval cosmology.

This course is envisioned as part of a series on mini-classes on Medieval Cosmology.

This is a three-session class.

LIVE OR LATER (All sessions are recorded)

Cost: $45 (includes lifetime access to recordings)

Book List:

Prince Caspian by CS Lewis

Macbeth by Shakespeare

As You Like It: A Shakespeare Webinar by Kelly Cumbee (Streaming Video)

Note: This is the streaming video of a previously live webinar.

How do I view the recording? Log in to your account on www.houseofhumaneletters.com, click on My Account and then Orders to view the recording. You cannot access the recording from your receipt. You must log in first.

C.S. Lewis says that reading old literature is a lot like visiting a foreign country and that there are two ways to experience it. You can travel as a tourist taking in the sights, or you “can eat the local food and drink the local wines, you can share the foreign life, you can begin to see the foreign country as it looks, not to the tourist, but to its inhabitants. You can come home modified, thinking and feeling as you did not think and feel before.”

In order to help you experience Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It in that second way, Kelly Cumbee will introduce you to the metaphors and imagery that formed the landscape of the Elizabethan imagination. She will also help you recognize the structure, contents, and stock characters that an Elizabethan audience would have expected of a Comedy, and will touch on the Pastoral Romance which inspired this play.

Can’t make the live session? No problem! The webinar will be recorded and available for you to view in your account shortly after the session (usually within 24 hours.)

FAQS

How do I view the Live session? On your receipt is a link; click the link and enter the webinar. There will also be an email sent out a few hours before the session with the link and detailed instructions.

How do I view the recording? Log in to your account on www.houseofhumaneletters.com, click on My Account and then Orders to view the recording. Videos typically appear in your account within 24 hours.

Bio:

Kelly Cumbee has loved music, nature, and stories as long as she can remember and believes that they are all connected. She has homeschooled her seven children for over twenty-five years, mostly by sitting in her rocking chair and reading aloud to them what she herself wanted to learn. A life-long student, she has spent the last two years in Angelina’s Medieval and Renaissance Literature and Early Modern Literature classes where she has had the pleasure of absorbing Angelina’s method of opening up literature through metaphor and form.

2024 Literary Life Conference (Recordings)

Dispelling the Myth of Modernity:

A Recovery of the Medieval Imagination

The myth of modernity is that it has no myth. But, even as we deny its existence, we are being blindly shaped, distorted and even enslaved by the myth of our age.

As CS Lewis writes in The Silver Chair, “Of course, the more enchanted you get, the more that you feel you are not enchanted at all.”

“Now the witch took out a musical instrument rather like a mandolin. She began to play it with her fingers–a steady monotonous thrumming that you didn’t notice after a few minutes. But the less you noticed it, the more it got into your brain and your blood. This also made it hard to think.”

The green witch then spoke to them in a sweet voice–quietly telling them that the only reality was that which they could see before their eyes. “Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?” she asked. All your visions of a world beyond are but a dream.

Until, at last, the companions, listening to the heavy enchantment of the Witch’s music, began to fall asleep and to find themselves deaf to any other sound.

Then Puddleglum, gathering the last of his strength, walked to the fire and, thrusting his foot into the flames, ground it into ashes. The stench of burning marshwiggle woke them all from the dream into which they had fallen.

Just like the characters in The Silver Chair, we too find ourselves under an enchantment that makes us blind and deaf—the enchantment of modernity. We need to break that spell by the restoration of the Medieval imagination, to awaken us once again to the reality of the world above.

Join us for the 6th annual Literary Life Online Conference where we seek to dis-spell the Myth of Modernity and gain eyes to see and ears to hear Reality as it truly is.

Schedule

Wednesday, April 10th at 7:00 PM ET: Angelina Stanford

“Untune that String, And Hark, What Discord Follows: Harmony in the Medieval Imagination”

Thursday, April 11th at 7:00 PM ET: Thomas Banks

“The Ghost of Thomas Hobbes”

Friday, April 12th at 7:30 PM ET: Dr. Jason Baxter

“What is Literature Good For? C.S. Lewis and the Landscape of the Imagination”

Saturday, April 13th at 12:00 PM ET (Session 1): Jenn Rogers

“Poetry and Prose”

Saturday, April 13th at 2:00 PM ET (Session 2): Kelly Cumbee

“On Medieval Originality”

2024 Fellowship Interest Meeting

(Note: This is a recording of a previously live webinar. To access the recorded video afterwards, log in to your House of Humane Letters account, click “Dashboard,” then “Orders,” then click the corresponding order. There will be a link that says “View Recording.”)

Students and teachers have been asking Angelina for years to develop a mentorship program–a way for students to be personally mentored and trained by me, to go deeper into their understanding of literature, literary theory, the imagination, and teaching practices and principles.

To that end, we bring you another round of The Fellowship: A Literary Mentorship Program.

This intimate Fellowship is for anyone who wants to go deeper in their understanding of how to read and in recovering the lost Intellectual Tradition, as well as learning how to pass along that tradition to others–in your home, in your classroom, in your book club. Wherever you can keep that Tradition alive!

We will be having an interest meeting via Zoom on February 1st at 7:00 PM ET. This is a chance for you to come and talk with Angelina Stanford and Kelly Cumbee as well as some of the current Fellows about what this program looks like, and if it will be a good fit for you.

To sign up for this meeting, add the $0.00 product to your cart, and complete the “purchase.” If you have any questions, feel free to email Atlee at [email protected].

Medieval Cosmology Bundle

Combination of our medieval cosmology mini-class recordings including: Seeking the Discarded Image: The Heavens Mini-Class by Kelly Cumbee C.S. Lewis says it is “worth while to spend some labour on…

Shakespeare Bundle

Combination of our Shakespeare mini-class and webinar recordings including: As You Like It: A Shakespeare Webinar by Kelly Cumbee C.S. Lewis says that reading old literature is a lot like…