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”