Emotion, language, and heroism in C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy

C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy presents a hero in the person of philologist Dr. Elwin Ransom. Lewis's presentation exhibits a purposeful and precise use of language that describes experience and characterizes emotional authenticity. This use of language becomes particularly interesting when examined in light of the theories of Owen Barfield, who along with Lewis recognizes that myth is significant as an expression of language and its relation to the human condition, and Joseph Campbell, who discusses the journey of the hero. In his own writings Lewis contends that there has been a process of working against the "mythical imagination," moving the hero away from the concrete and toward the abstract. Lewis works to reverse this process by presenting a modern hero who demonstrates an awareness of "old" conventions of language, emotion, and expression in which archaic and mythic concepts are available, where understanding need not be abstract to be acceptable.