The Ideal of Kingship in the Writings of Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by Christopher Scarf;

Author:Christopher Scarf; [Scarf, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Inklings, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, Clive Staples, J.R.R. Tolkien, fantasy, Oxford writers, Kingship, God, Philosophy, literarure, literary criticism, twentieth-century, divine, human, myth, mythological, vice-gerent, vice-regent, Christian
Publisher: ISD Distribution
Published: 2014-06-11T23:00:00+00:00

A Spiritual Kingdom

Lewis endeavoured to merge the mythical Logres with contemporary Britain. Ransom was not only the Head of the Company, but also the Pendragon, the Chief, from the Brythonic pen, a head, and dragwn, a dragon, a guardian of treasure. Calling Ransom ‘Pendragon’ corroborates the idea of the Company as a living remnant of Logres. Jane Studdock has “Vision”, which is the power to dream realities.38 Lewis’s Jane calls to mind an idea in The Romance of the Rose. The author of the earlier part of The Romance of the Rose, c.1225, Guillaume de Lorris, said, “For my part I am confident that a dream may signify the good and ill that may befall people, for many people dream many things secretly, at night, which are later seen openly”.39 Jane had a “gift”, that of seeing “real people” in her dreams, dreams that led her to meet Ransom, and eventually to joining the “King’s side”, and to becoming a Christian. Jane had learned from Miss Ironwood, a “doctor”, that she (Jane) had a “gift” of dreaming about “real people”. In fact, she dreamed about a man “all golden and strong”,40 with a beard. Meeting him in the waking world, she recognised Mr Fisher-King.

Lewis’s vision of the Fisher-King is enhanced as Ransom invited Jane to stay while he had lunch. A tray was brought in “bearing a glass, a small flacon of red wine, and a roll of bread”. Ransom “broke the bread and poured himself out a glass of wine”.41 This priest-kingly activity has strong Eucharistic overtones. It was, in fact, Melchisedec who, as the Priest-King of Salem, in biblical tradition made the first offering of bread and wine long before the Eucharist was first celebrated.42 In The Figure of Arthur in Arthurian Torso (1948), Charles Williams quotes Robert Paululus (c.1178), with perhaps, the Fisher-King in mind, “No longer the old Melchizedeck, flesh born of flesh, but the new man, spirit born of spirit, offers the invisible offering of flesh and blood through the oblation of earthly food”.43

Lewis emphasises the connection he sees between the allegiance to royalty and the need for obeying a call to duty immediately. Ransom said he lives “like the King in Curdie”,44 in which the miner’s son Curdie braves dangers from goblins to save the princess to whom he owes allegiance. In MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin (1872), “The king, who was the wisest man in the kingdom, knew well there was a time when things must be done and questions left till afterwards”.45 This echoes De Caussade’s idea of “obedience to the present moment”.46

Ransom owes allegiance to Maleldil, Christ the divine King, and therefore endeavours to save the Company and Britain-Logres from the N.I.C.E. Ransom’s Company is reminiscent not only of Williams’s idea of a ‘company’ but also of the Pauline ideas expressed in Lewis’s essay Membership (1945). Lewis advocates neither an excess of “solitude” nor of “our modern collectivism”, but rather the idea of being “members” of a “Body”, Christ’s “mystical body”.

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