“The air of Narnia had been working upon him … and all his old battles came back to him, and his arms and fingers remembered their old skill. He was King Edmund once more.”

In this week’s wide-ranging discussion, Dr. Jason Baxter talks about fellow Medievalist C. S. Lewis’s ideas of story and history—and how those ideas matter for the education and formation of a thoroughly modern people. What can today’s “classical revival movements” learn from Lewis?

Chapters:

3:56 C. S. Lewis’s library

6:31 His theory of stories: mining ancient jewels

14:49 His theory of history: a post-Christian world

17:14 Modern man’s trouble with pre-modern texts

20:09 Embracing modernity and tradition

25:45 Making virtue attractive

33:49 How to “teach” a passion

42:45 Why a new translation of Dante

49:51 Wounded by beauty

Links:

jasonmbaxter.com featuring articles and lectures

Beauty Matters, Substack for Jason Baxter

The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason Baxter

The Divine Comedy: Inferno translated by Jason Baxter

Center for Beauty and Culture at Benedictine College

Also on the Forum:

A Doctor, a Lawyer, and a Cop Walk into a Boys School, episode two of Heights Forum Faculty Podcast

What Fiction Is For featuring Joe Breslin

Inferno or Paradiso? On Introducing Students to the Divine Comedy featuring Jason Baxter