Khari’s Reviews > The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature > Status Update

"Nature gives most of her evidence in answer to the questions we ask her."

"We can no longer dismiss the change of a Models as a simple progression from error to truth. No Model is a catalogue of ultimate realities, and none is a mere fantasy. Each...attempts to get in all the phenomena known at a given period, and each succeeds in getting in a great many. But...no less surely, each reflects the prevalent psychology of an age almost as much as it reflects the state of that age's knowledge."

"the demand for a developing world-a demand obviously in harmony both with the revolutionary and the romantic temper-grows up first; when it is full grown the scientists go to work and discover the evidence on which our belief in that sort of universe would now be held to rest."

"Many generations, each in its own spirit and its own style, have contributed to the story of Arthur. It is misleading to think of Malory as an author in our modern sense and throw all the earlier work into the category of 'sources'. He is merely the last builder, doing a few demolitions here and adding a few features there."

"It follows that the book-author unit, basic for modern criticism, must often be abandoned when we are dealing with medieval literature. Some books...must be regarded more as we regard those cathedrals where work of many different periods is mixed and produces a total effect, admirable indeed but never foreseen nor intended by any one of the successive builders."

"...a life of unmitigated ratio, where nothing was simply 'seen' and all had to be proved, would presumably be impossible; for nothing can be proved if nothing is self-evident."

...through it, so does he. Did you know that the distinction came from the philosophical thought of the middle ages? I didn't.

"We are enjoying intellectus when we 'just see' a self-evident truth; we are exercising ratio when we proceed step by step to prove a truth which is not self-evident. A cognitive life in which all truth can be simply 'seen' would be the life of an intelligentia, an angel....

I am consistently amazed by how little I know. Today I am left with a feeling of respect for other authors which have somehow managed to imbibe the meaning and beliefs of past ages and then pour them forth into their own work. Take Harry Dresden for a moment, he makes friends with the intellectus of the Island in Lake Michigan. He explains it as a spirit that knows everything about it's little island, and...

"Virtue is tarnished if a man displays it so as to get credit for it."

Boethius I Pros. III, P. 140.