
	REHABILITATING BEAUTY: C. S. LEWIS ON EDUCATION AND THE ARTS (61,000 words) by Louis A. Markos, PhD, Professor in English, Houston Baptist University MARKETING ANALYSIS AND SYNOPSIS In the closing lines of his poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John Keats makes the memorable, if somewhat enigmatic claim that “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” These five words, when filtered through the life and legacy of C. S. Lewis, provide the impetus and raison d’être for this book. More and more in our modern and postmodern culture these two concepts (beauty and truth) have been separated both from each other and from their individual connection to a divine source of Beauty and Truth: a separation which is perhaps most evident in the twin realms of education and the arts. Even as our public schools move further and further away from their connection to the universal moral code (what Lewis dubbed the Tao), the world of art (whether “high” or “low”) embraces an aesthetic that privileges ugliness over beauty, nihilism over form, and radical self-expression over the pursuit of higher truth. As both an effective apologist for (and practitioner of) truth-based education and as a sub-creator of his own beauty-enhancing fiction, Lewis is the ideal guide for all those who would seek to restore truth and beauty to their proper place and role in our modern world. The target audience for this book would include readers of Christianity Today (and her sister publications), First Things, and Touchstone who enjoy the challenging works of such writers as C. S. Lewis, Philip Yancey, Os Guinness, John Stott, Chuck Colson, Frederica Matthewes-Green, Lesslie Newbigin, John Eldredge, Richard John Neuhaus, and (especially) Peter Kreeft. Like the major works of C. S. Lewis, Rehabilitating Beauty is firmly non-denominational and should appeal to Bible readers who hail from Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Pentecostal traditions. The book, though not “dumbed down” in any way, is aimed squarely at the layman; the chapters are free of all notes and unfamiliar critical jargon. Indeed, in constructing the MS, I have emulated not the work of modern academic scholars but that of a slightly earlier body of critics and essayists who used to bear the collective title of “men of letters”: Clifton Fadiman, Lionel Trilling, E. B. White, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Mark Van Doren, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, etc. The MS is complete and can be mailed out in part or in whole. Individual sections can also be sent by email upon request. I may be reached by phone (281-649-3000, ext. 2279) or by email (lmarkos@hbu.edu). For an overview of my credentials and other written work, please consult my web page: http://fc.hbu.edu/~lmarkos. Below are full synopses of the four long sections that make up the MS (see page four for a Table of Contents). The first two sections focus on the arts; the second two on education. I then close with a satirical piece of fiction (patterned after Lewis’s Screwtape Letters) that offers a different perspective from which to view the breakdown of beauty and truth in our modern world. REHABILITATING BEAUTY (17,000 words) Of all the writers of the 20^th century (that era when ugliness truly came in to its own), Lewis was perhaps the greatest apologist for beauty. He saw all too well the modern aversion to beauty, and he understood that the cause of that aversion is finally less aesthetic than it is psychological: a rather desperate defense mechanism to protect our jaded, agnostic age from that terrible Beauty that dwells together with Goodness and Truth in the heart of the Creator and of the creation he made. Understanding further that when beauty is deconstructed, goodness and truth inevitably follow in its wake, Lewis set himself the dual task of rehabilitating the reputation of beauty in his non-fiction and embodying (nay, incarnating) its presence in his fiction. In this section, I first survey the causes and nature of our modern “Cult of the Ugly,” and then counter that cult through analysis of The Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Till We Have Faces. To read this section in the fom of a single essay, please click here: THE GOOD GUYS AND THE BAD GUYS (13,000 words) Though we live in a modern age that desperately needs moral certainty, most of the aesthetic, educational, and political leaders in the Western world are dismissive (at best) and suspicious (at worst) of such certainty. As such, it is vital that those who still believe in universal ethical standard are equipped to so foster and guide the young that they will grow to become responsible moral agents: able to discern that which is good from that which is evil, that which is virtuous from that which is vicious, that which should (and must) be encouraged if the individual and society are to prosper from that which must be avoided if we and our world are to resist plunging into darkness. If we do not do this (either because we are lazy and apathetic or because we have internalized a modernist/postmodernist agenda), then we abdicate, in part, our roles as parents and educators, as shapers of the hearts, minds, and souls of the young. In this section, I show how parents can fulfil this goal through discussing with their children the seven books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia. Novel by novel, I show how the Chronicles are an ideal platform for teaching our children how to perform three tasks of increasing subtlety: 1) identifying which are the good guys and which are the bad guys; 2) articulating why the good guys are good and the bad guys are bad; and 3) understanding the true nature of goodness and evil. MEN WITHOUT CHESTS (15,000 words) This section, which rises out of a reading of C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man, discusses what might happen to a society that abandons its duty to educate its children in accordance with fixed moral/ethical standards. The first part of the section focuses exclusively on education and culminates with a close look at three "ethics-conscious" literary works that offer dark prophecies similar to those of Lewis (Aristophanes' The Clouds, Dante's Inferno, and Dickens' Hard Times). The second part broadens its scope to consider wider socio-political issues: namely, the frequent attempts made by post-Enlightenment societies to build new, man-made utopias free from the “oppressive weight” of the Tao. In most cases, of course, these would-be utopias ultimately metamorphosed into dystopias that bound rather than freed the dreams of their builders and that reduced rather than expanded the human potential of those trapped within them. I demonstrate first the two basic ways that this moving of an entire state or culture outside of the Tao is generally accomplished (either one part of the Tao is sacrificed in order to fulfil another, or the Tao is rejected altogether and replaced by a new morality), and then argue that whichever path is chosen, the end is always the same: death, despair, and dehumanization. ASLAN IN THE ACADEMY (10,000 words) In addition to being a famed writer and speaker, C. S. Lewis was a dedicated teacher who, with the same synthetic, shaping imagination he brought to Narnia, creatively integrated his public, academic role as professor and scholar with his private, personal identity as follower of Christ and defender of the faith. In this section, I suggest seven initiatives that we as modern Christian educator must take if we are to follow in the footsteps of Lewis: 1) we must have the courage to break down the chronological snobbery of our age; 2) we must have the courage to take a second look at the received wisdom concerning the general intellectual history of Europe and America; 3) we must be willing to be thought of as a dinosaur, as one who believes, embodies, and feels in his bones the moral and aesthetic values of "Old Western" culture; 4) we must employ a genial criticism in our critique not only of ages but of individual works and genres; 5) we must reject Screwtape’s historical point of view: “when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it is true”; 6) we must be willing to reach out to a wider, public audience, not keep things locked up in the ivory tower; 7) we must seek to instill in our students a love of and desire for virtue. SCREWTAPE’S MILLENNIAL TOAST (5000 words) This satirical essay offers an updating of C. S. Lewis's “Screwtape Proposes a Toast” that exposes what Satan's main temptation tactics have been since the 1960's. I offer it as the epilogue to this book, for, as it turns out, Satan’s main tactic has been to separate the teenage population both from beauty and from truth. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: REHABILITATING BEAUTY Chapter 1: Fractured Fairy Tales and the Cult of the Ugly Chapter 2: The Space Trilogy I: The Beauty of Hierarchy Chapter 3: The Space Trilogy II: The Beauty of the Normal Chapter 4: Narnia I: The Beauty of Complementarity Chapter 5: Narnia I: The Beauty of Clarity Chapter 6: Narnia I: The Beauty of Light and Truth Chapter 7: Till We Have Faces: The Beauty of Beauty PART II: THE GOOD GUYS AND THE BAD GUYS Chapter 8: The Nature of Good and Evil Chapter 9: Further Up and Further Down Chapter 10: Heroes and Villains Chapter 11 Courage Along the Road Chapter 12: The Heirs of Nietzsche PART III: MEN WITHOUT CHESTS Chapter 13: Losing the Tao Chapter 14: The Dangers of a Values Free Education Chapter 15: From Tao-less Students to Tao-less Citizens Chapter 16: The Scientist and the Magician Chapter 17: The Chest-less Tyrant Chapter 18: The Death of Language PART IV: ASLAN IN THE ACADEMY Chapter 19: Rehabilitating the Past Chapter 20: The Renaissance Never Happened Chapter 21: Dinosaurs in the Classroom Chapter 22: Genial Criticism Chapter 23: The Historical Point of View Chapter 24: The Professor as Public Educator Chapter 25: Rehabilitating Virtue EPILOGUE: KNOW THY ENEMY Screwtape’s Millennial Toast

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