The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature

But nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her.

There was then, and is still, a Christian ‘left’, eager to detect and anxious to banish every Pagan element; but also a Christian ‘right’ who, like St Augustine, could find the doctrine of the Trinity foreshadowed in the Platonici,2 or could claim triumphantly, like Justin Martyr, ‘Whatever things have been well said by all men belong to us Christi

The elementary Historicism which sees divine judgements in all disasters—the beaten side always deserved their beating—or the still more elementary sort which holds that everything is, and always was, going to the dogs—is not uncommon.

The emphasis usually falls on the past splendour rather than on the subsequent decline.

Nature has all sorts of phenomena in stock and can suit many different tastes.

We that dwelle under the Mone Stand in this world upon a weer (Confessio, Prol.

But to consult a map before we set out has no such ill effect. Indeed it will lead us to many prospects; including some we might never have found by following our noses.

I hope to persuade the reader not only that this Model of the Universe is a supreme medieval work of art but that it is in a sense the central work, that in which most particular works were embedded, to which they constantly referred, from which they drew a great deal of their strength.

One is tempted to say that almost the typical activity of the medieval author consists in touching up something that was already there;

The last, and neo-Platonic, wave of Paganism which had gathered up into itself much from the preceding waves, Aristotelian, Platonic, Stoic, and what not, came far inland and made brackish lakes which have, perhaps, never been drained.