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Last Updated 8/31/21

The following is a rough transcript of an answer Dr. Charlie Starr gave to the question “Why care about myths? Aren’t they just lies or fiction at their best?” He answered this as part of the podcast mini-series on The Faun’s Bookshelf that began on August 30, 2021, on All About Jack (here’s a direct link to the first show where this comes from). This answer can also be heard over at the Knowing and Understanding C.S. Lewis YouTube channel.

As a “rough” transcript, it has only been lightly edited and subject to revision. As it is updated the version number above will reflect that, along with the date of the last revision.

CS Lewis, of course, once believed that was so. That myths were just lies, though breathed through silver. He once said in a famous conversation with Tolkien. Early in his life Lewis believes that myths were just invention, and that they had no connection to reality, to history, and therefore they had no connection to truth. They were imaginative constructs meant for the imagination to enjoy. But the imagination for Lewis was not a source of truth (for the young Lewis).

For the later, Lewis, there’s still a great deal to debate on. Regarding the connections between imagination and truth in Lewis’s thinking, we want to say that there is a definite connection. But Lewis’s writing seems to suggest that maybe there’s not. When somebody asks me the question, did Lewis believe in imaginative truth? I want to answer yes and no. And I think that’s about as close as we can get to coming to a final answer to that particular question. But, for Louis, then, myth really mattered. Because in that famous conversation with Tolkien, what Lewis learned was that myth is not mere lie. Myth is invention, about reality. So it’s an imaginative invention, which is born out of the fact that we are made in the image of God who is himself imaginative and an inventor. So God is the Creator. And on a lower scale, then we can be creators. Tolkien famously referred to us as sub creators in his poem mythopoetic, which was written about his conversation with Lewis on that one, fateful night in September 1931. And in their conversation with Tolken taught Lewis was that myth has truth value, because it is invention about reality. And then Christ is the story of all mythic stories. It’s the mythic story that actually then happened in history. And so CS Lewis would refer to Christ as the myth become fact.

But in addition, then to the most important thing, and what’s leading to Lewis’s conversion to Christianity. What’s also important then is that myth became valuable for Lewis as a source of knowledge. And later on, he will talk about this, in a lot of places, but especially famously, in his essay Myth became Fact, other places as well, even in Mere Christianity, certainly in his book, Miracles, and so on. For Lewis myth is a way of encountering the real which leads to knowledge. And I use that vocabulary very specifically, we would tend to want to save for Lewis myth lead to truth. And I don’t think we’d be inaccurate saying that, it’s just that Lewis had a very specific definition of truth. And so he wouldn’t particularly put it that way. But he would say myth helps us encounter the transcendent real, if we wanted to start talking Plato and platonic essence that’s what myths sort of helps us capture. And in myth, we can take truth, which for Lewis is otherwise abstract ideas that we have about reality. In myth, we can encounter truth as reality apart from its abstraction. So that’s really, really important for Lewis. And that then is important for us as Christians today. Or as anyone who’s interested in the study of anything from the fairytale to the science fiction story. In stories that feature the fantastic, whether we call them sci fi, or fantasy, or the like in in story, or even magical realism, if you think about it. In stories that feature, the fantastic, we encounter some level of the real, that realistic literature, modernist literature can’t, or at least doesn’t tend to capture. So myth is a way…a mode of knowing. So that’s a nice way that I like to put it myth is a mode of knowing. And Lewis did not at first believe that, but by the time he was into his 30s, he did. And you see you no evidence of that even as early as The Pilgrims Regress when he tried to write his personal biography as an allegory.

So, so yeah, myth is really important. I would go so far as to say that myth is a mode of thought that is ancient and that we were in danger of losing in the 20th century. This traces all the way back to the Enlightenment, where certain modes of thought were considered no longer significant. First Reason was the most, most important mode of thought. And then Science became the most important mode of thought, even to a sense over reasons so that, at one point, even reason itself and the form of philosophy was having was having…What’s the good term for it, a bit of not an identity crisis, but a bit of a self-esteem crisis, if you will, where science seem to be the dominant way of thinking about everything. And as proof, and I talked about this, in the book, as proof of this, I like to think of two examples where, again, in a 20th century, that was, dominated by the modernist project. And then the postmodern project, which in a certain sense, it’s just an extension of modernism and modernism, an extension of realism. In the midst of the movies that people were making, the writing that was being done, the literature that was being produced, the poetry, the stage, drama, that was that was being produced. By the time we got to the 70s, there was like this gigantic vacuum, culturally speaking in in the West, where mythic thought had been utterly lost. And, and to two people then in the 20th century, probably more than two but to stand out to me, deliberately wrote myth as a curative that is they invented myth. Now, myth in in human history, tends to be a thing that that coalesces, rather than is invented, and, any kind of deliberate, or way but with the study of myth that was going on in the 19th and 20th century, and therefore, looking at myth, at a more conscious level.

Again, two people in my mind stood out. One was JRR Tolkien. This is this isn’t to say that Lewis didn’t participate in the same role that Tolkien did. But Tolkien seem to deliberately want to write myth for his nation, and route them in myth again. So there’s that and then, especially in the world of film, where, in the 1970s, you know, the kind of moviemaking was the kind of movie making done by Scorsese and Coppola and the 70s were the decade of Woody Allen.

And it was cynical, it was self-aware. And it was very, very adult. But somehow, in the middle of that, really, for me, depressing decade, disco, you know, just come on, really. Somehow, for me, in the middle of that decade, comes this guy named George Lucas, who deliberately wanted to write a myth in film version, and he did in the form of Star Wars, which changed in the direction of film ever since and has helped, you know, fantasy and science fiction find their place in contemporary culture.

So there was such a strong need for mythic wonder, in the latter half of the 20th century. Well, and even in the middle of the century, there was such a need for mythic wonder that somebody had to deliberately start writing myth again. And Lewis did that. Tolkien did that Lucas did that. And the reason I mentioned Tolkien and Lucas, then is that it was argued very effectively by Tom Shippi, that while the literary critics of the 20th century would all point to the, you know, the modernist literature, and they would name something like James Joyce’s Ulysses is the most important book in the 20th century. The people and not just ordinary people, but people who were readers appointed to Tolkien’s book to the Lord of the Rings as the most important book of the 20th century. And so he deliberately brought myth back for more people than then maybe even CS Lewis did, though certainly Lewis had his contribution. And then, certainly in my mind, George Lucas changed the way Hollywood made movies, and then the content of film coming out of Hollywood as well.

You might remember the 70s when Disney almost disappeared, when Disney films were just not great. Nobody wanted to see them anymore. Or if they were great people still didn’t want to see them anymore. The G-rated film disappeared in the 70s and Disney put out their first PG-rated film. Can you believe that? in the form of The Black Hole, and Disney didn’t figure out how to make a movie again, Tom, it was the Little Mermaid, and it was primarily because they started studying myth, as you’ll find in Christopher Vogler. The writers journey. It really wasn’t true study of myth. You know, following Joseph Campbell, and sort of the secular, mythic, secular approach to studying myth, following Campbell’s and Vogler realized like these are the kinds of stories that people want to hear. And of course, Lucas proved that by writing the Star Wars stories, according to Joseph Campbell’s, you know, hero with 1000 faces the hero’s journey. So yeah, math is absolutely necessary at won’t go away in the fact that we are currently in a glut of films about spandex-wearing gods. You know, superheroes, is proof. You know, we may get tired of superhero movies, but we’ll just we’ll just find something else. Some other wondrous thing that we absolutely have to put into film, and we’ll keep on doing that.