When I fail as a critic I may yet be useful as a specimen.
posted 7/01/1985 12:00AM
Lewis delivered a radio adaptation of his inaugural lecture as Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature giver, at Cambridge on November 29, 1954. Here are some excerpts from that radio message.
“To study the past does indeed liberate us from the present, from the idols of our own marketplace, but I think it liberates us from the past too.”
I don’t think we need fear that the study of a day and period, however prolonged, however sympathetic, need be an indulgence in nostalgia or an enslavement to the past. In the individual life as the psychologists have taught us, it’s not the remembered past, it’s the forgotten past that enslaves us. And I think that’s true of society. To study the past does indeed liberate us from the present, from the idols of our own marketplace, but I think it liberates us from the past too. I think no class of men are less enslaved to the past than historians. It is the unhistorical who are usually without knowing it enslaved to a very recent past.…
The christening ...
To view this item, you must be a member of ChristianHistory.net.
If you ARE a member of ChristianHistory.net…
Please login:
If you are NOT a member of ChristianHistory.net…
Please click here to see our membership options. As a member, you will be able to have access to all of the content on ChristianHistory.net.
