Description

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.****

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.