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I just cleared out "facts" because i googled them and they appear to have originated out of a customer review. Not good enough rationale for me to consider keeping them in the article; as most were patently false. However, the article is now obviously aesthetically unappealing. I'm reading a few books right now on C.S. Lewis, including TWHF. I'll try to fill it in with info i learn or recall in the next week or two. b_cubed 01:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to include a pronunciation for Orual. -(on a slightly different note, i do not think that a pronunciation explanation for 'psyche' is necessary. my main rationale being that 'psyche' is an actual word. if people need to know how to pronounce 'psyche' they can grab a dictionary.)- Various webpages show it as (OR-RULE). I think that is a little confusing. I was thinking Or-roo-al might work. any suggestions? b_cubed 20:11, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I feel we need to choose one cover art, esp. for such a small article. It is overwhelming with 3 different cover arts which, for the most part add nothing (the last one most definitely). I originally added the one with Orual and Psyche back to back simply because I thought it was helpful to see a picture of Orual wearing her mask (mainly to jog some memories) --no where in this article does it mention her wearing it!!-- definitely a crucial addition. The copy that i own is the second cover art (the one with classic art on it). Perhaps that's the one that should be used in the infobox. i didn't upload it simply because i figured it would be best to try to find older cover art for the book. If we can edit the article so that Orual's mask is mentioned. I vote to remove the first and third cover art. Move the second one into the infobox. Then delete whatever addendum is currently under the second cover art. --b_cubed 31 July 2006
This article's structure is hampered by the number of direct citations that are really unnecessary. If you observe the layout you can easily notice how it looks really choppy on the right side. Someone should simply paraphrase and then cite the original quotes. The article would look much nicer that way. --B³ 17:15, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
This is a very mediocre retelling of either the novel or the myth.
Also, if anyone knows of a website that disects this book, it would be great if they put it on here--ADDED TO EXTERNAL LINKS
This linked analysis / review of "Till We have Faces" is a misread of the book. While Orual's projected image may accomplish results, the book does not recommend this approach. I suggest removing it from External Links. Pettegrew2 14:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree — I also feel that the linked review is a misread. It seems as if that essay was deliberately constructed as some sort of project for a business course — and in my opinion it's community college level stuff. Nonetheless, it is an analytical voice and one person's perspective, no matter how anonymous they may be. So, principally speaking, we shouldn't mute voices simply because we don't agree with them. Piewalker 21:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I think it also gets the key section wrong - where Orual finds Psyche then demands Psyche take the lamp into the bedchamber. She first encounters Psyche wearing the rags that are left from her original dress and drinking dew on plants while saying "look at my royal robes and taste this wonderful honey". The glimpse of the castle is hardly that of seeing solid gold walls she could touch for a time or even something "distinctly recognized", it was a ghost or a shadow. And Orual threatens to kill herself (and even cuts herself) to get Psyche to do the deed, but Orual is concerned that Psyche will freeze or starve during the oncoming winter. But this is where the crux of the problem lies - as Groucho Marx put it, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?". For whatever reason, Lewis made the existence (if you can call it even that) of castle subtle, certainly not in what we would call the real world, but I don't know if he was using some other style. Orual also had companions on some of the occasions and I don't think any of them saw the castle either. Is Psyche psycho? Or in a true religious ecstasy where miracles happen? Even Psyche's scream of despair doesn't really resolve it - would she not scream from the illusion being shattered as well as being confirmed by betrayl?
These are questions raised but not resolved. Perhaps it would be better not to have a synopsis since it is very hard not to stick to the plot without commenting on what should or should not be.
Just in case any needs to know, the book isn't out of print, or at least isn't any longer. I bought a copy at Border's not too long ago.
Borders does not carry them normally. You have to order it from them.
I'm uncertain about the characterization of Till We Have Faces as fantasy. OK, the gods are characters, but their actions are ambiguous and largely off-screen. Nearly all the supernatural content is also presented ambiguously, often in the form of dreams or visions — arguably, in the same manner that supernatural content is encountered in the real world, subject to either rationalist or supernatural interpretation. And that's one of the novel's themes: the fact that whether the world is governed by rational laws or supernatural beings is partly determined by how we view it and what we allow ourselves to see.
Excellent addition to this article (with reference no less), Das Baz. It has illuminated this article and discussion. I'm sure Lewis himself was aware of the connection of Beauty and the Beast to the greek myth, though it'd be fascinating to find evidence of it, even if it takes a re-read of Till We Have Faces. Is not Orual the beast...who, in the end, is reconciled to her own identity, grows a face, becomes a real human, and nobly arrives face to face with the gods? --Piewalker 17:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Indeed, the same idea was proposed by Gracia Fay Ellwood. Great minds think alike. Das Baz 16:30, 22 July 2006 (UTC) I suppose you're gonna make me find this one? :) Flattered for the comment. Have a good weekend.--Piewalker 05:07, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree that TWHF cannot be described simply as fantasy. In some ways Lewis anticipated what is now called magic realism: the setting is intended to be a realistic (imaginative) setting, and is quite interesting in itself - the world on the fringes of Greece and Persia, with the new ideas just filtering through. It wouldn't quite be magic realism, as the question of the status of the supernatural is one of the issues.
It is Lewis's least typical book. I think the commentator who said it was a poor retelling of the myth is looking for the wrong things: Lewis did not intend to follow the original closely, only to use it as a basis. It is not a book for everyone, I think. I have found it full of profound ideas and have re-read it every few years, and usually found something new. In particular I find a great deal about the reconciliation of different sorts of truth.
the origin and evolution of titles needs referenced a bit. it reads like original research otherwise. b_cubed 04:39, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Too many Wikipedians have this silly phobia of "Original Research" and this grotesque notion that nothing can be said unless it has been said before in print. Plain common sense and obvious cocnlusions are shunned with horror if no printed quote can be found. The commonsensical and easily verifiable do not need to be exhaustively referenced. 15:35, 5 September 2006 (UTC)Das Baz 15:36, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I went ahead and added the note to Corinthians with brief explanation re Lewis' apologism (curiously understated in this article IMO) and veil metaphor. Dr.Easter (talk) 16:00, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
And what is this nonsense about "B-class"? Till We Have Faces is a classic, a great work of literature. Das Baz 15:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
Removed reference to fox's influence. Correct me if I'm wrong but one characteristic of Orual is that she tends to believe what she want's to, often taking people's opinions farther than they should be taken (something that I do, and don't believe to be too far of a stretch to say that everyone else does as well, given that we are human). I don't think it is right to say that the plot was influenced by Fox, esp. after Orual returns and she doesn't tell him the full story because she knows it isn't what the Fox would have done. b_cubed 16:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)\\
I believe I have read that Lewis was convinced to change the title by his editor who thought "Bareface" sounded like a Western.
I think there is an error in this section where it references "Psyche's rescue from the human sacrifice by Cupid". It is my understanding that all the people thought the god to whom Psyche was to be sacrificed was a beast, and that they were simply mistaken. Isn't this "beast monster" really just Cupid himself? He simply took her away to his invisible palace instead of devouring her as the locals expected. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamx0r (talk • contribs) 22:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)
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BetacommandBot (talk) 02:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
I might be way off here, but given that C.S. Lewis was interested in linguistics, and that he makes a point in the book of giving Greek translations, I wonder if the names in the book might be grounded in a real-world language. Because the book is set somewhere North-West (from memory) of Persia, and east of Greece, I thought the language might be Semitic.
The Greek names given for the two princesses are Psyche and Maia; Psyche being soul/mind in Greek... a quick check on the net shows the most common Hebrew word for soul to be "Nephesh", which is nothing like Ista, although this page http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2006-April/028027.html lists "yetser maHshavot" as being a Hebrew word for 'organ for thoughts' from 1 or 2 Chronicles. I don't think it's a stretch to go from Yetser to Ista, so could be the source.
I've found it harder to get a meaning for "Maia"; it was the name of one of Zeus' nursemaids, and I think the origin of the month-name "May". The meanings the internet has given me are "Nurse/Mother/Sister/May/Spring", with this translator http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon giving "nursemaid". I looked up Strong's Hebrew concordance and found 'owlel for "suckling"(as in an infant)- http://www.sacrednamebible.com/kjvstrongs/STRHEB57.htm; going for the "spring/may" angle I did find that "owr" is the root for bright...http://www.sacrednamebible.com/kjvstrongs/STRHEB2.htm pretty weak maybe, but interesting. Also, 'Arar means "to bare" (http://www.sacrednamebible.com/kjvstrongs/STRHEB62.htm).
If someone with more resources and expertise could find a possible source for "Ungit", maybe related to a real Middle-Eastern Goddess, and have another look for Maia and Psyche, it could be an interesting bit to add... The reason I'm concentrating on Hebrew here is that it's probably the most easily researched Semitic language for a European like Lewis to use, and he probably had some knowledge of Biblical Hebrew from his scriptural research.
Of course, all this probably constitutes original research, so it's more something for people interested in the book to discuss on the talk page than something to be incorporated into the article for now.
korshi —Preceding comment was added at 03:18, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
I have begun a copy edit of the article; I am copying the quotes used in the article here for future reference or inclusion in WikiQuotes, in case I decide to work some of the quotations into the text:
“ | The idea of re-writing the old myth, with the palace invisible, has been in my mind ever since I was an undergraduate and it always involved writing through the mouth of the elder sister. I tried it in all sorts of verse-forms in the days when I still supposed myself to be a poet. So, though the version you have read was very quickly written, you might say I’ve been at work on Orual for 35 years. Of course in my pre-Christian days she was to be in the right and the gods in the wrong. | ” |
I don’t see why people… would be deterred from buying it if they did think it a Western. …Actually, I think the title cryptic enough to be intriguing.
One other possible title has occurred to me: Till We Have Faces. My heroine says in one passage, ‘How can the gods meet us face to face till we have faces?’
How can they (i.e. the gods) meet us face to face till we have faces? The idea was that a human being must become real before it can expect to receive any message from the superhuman; that is, it must be speaking with its own voice (not one of its borrowed voices), expressing its actual desires (not what it imagines that it desires), being for good or ill itself, not any mask, veil, or persona.
-Samuel Tan 14:53, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Completed the copy edit. I removed a large portion of one of the last paragraphs because it is far too confusing and convoluted (and not to mention unsourced). I have copied it below for use by experts or others wanting to expand the article:
"Furthermore, the plot, hatched by Orual and executed by Psyche, is an allegory for humanity's calculating and ambitious tendencies to supersede rule or law—to circumvent, mute, or escape punishment. This is a hard-earned concept that Psyche, and later, Orual, arrive at, effectively "earning" or "growing" their once bare, identityless faces, which fittingly qualifies them to meet the gods face to face in their own respective time frames. Still, the metaphorical device of "faces" allows the novel's arguably underlying theme of redemption to reach fruition (e.g., Psyche's rescue from the human sacrifice by Cupid; Aphrodite's allowances with the negotiating Cupid; the forgiveness of Cupid for Psyche's betrayal; forgiveness for Orual's contempt for her sister, her father, the Fox, the gods; and finally, a glorious rescue from her own self-hate). Notably, Orual has been compared to the "Beast" in the Beauty and the Beast adaptation, among other variations of the Psyche and Cupid myth. (Prima facie, she is one of Beauty's jealous sisters—characters missing in the Disney adaptation). In fact, the novel's same conclusion of redemption and transcendence from animal-like conditions remains in Beauty and the Beast, albeit with focus on different characters. It is ironic that Orual feared Cupid to be a beast or devil." -Samuel Tan 09:49, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
Do plot summaries need to be sourced? I would believe that they do, otherwise fall under the guise of "original research". The question is raised, in particular, with regard to the reference to the Four Loves early in the plot summary. Clever though this is, this is an element of analysis/allusion, and so strikes me as being original work—i.e., the clever sort of allusion that might appear in an academic discussion of this book (though appearing without citation). Bottom line, as much as I enjoy this article, it appears yet to be a rather individualized, and so provincial (rather than encyclopedic) description and approach to this poorly understood CSL work. Cheers, and best wishes. LeProf. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.175.244.80 (talk) 20:33, 9 February 2013 (UTC)
This is just a slight suggestion to improve this article and maybe to increase its breadth a little (though this suggestion will take a little bit of elbow grease).
Would this article benefit from a section discussing a Christian literary analysis of the book? There are points and moments where one can tell that C.S. Lewis is making his claims about "Christianity fulfilling mythology" through TWHF -- -- and I am sure that there are some fantastic literary analyses written out there for this very purpose (though I have not myself done such research...).
Again, this is just a suggestion that might improve the breadth of the article -- -- I think some sort of approach to its literary interpretation could do a lot for improving an article about an immensely deep and well-written work! Sir Ian (talk) 19:33, 14 May 2013 (UTC)
Please note that this article's infobox is retrieving an ISBN from Wikidata currently. This is the result of a change made to ((Infobox book)) as a result of this RfC. It would be appreciated if an editor took some time to review this ISBN to ensure it is appropriate for the infobox. If it is not, you could consider either correcting the ISBN on Wikidata (preferred) or introducing a blank ISBN parameter in the infobox to block the retrieval from Wikidata. If you do review the ISBN, please respond here so other editors don't duplicate your work. This is an automated message to address concerns that this change did not show up on watchlists. ~ RobTalk 01:26, 15 May 2016 (UTC)
Wow. An entire article on Till We Have Faces that never mentions Arnom or Trunia or Redival or the duel with Argan or the abusive nature of the King, and barely squeezes in the Fox and Bardia in retrospect. The synopsis is supposed to summarize the whole story, isn't it, not pick out the thematically central plot thread and exclude all the subplots? And isn't it usual to have a list of characters as well as a plot summary? —VeryRarelyStable (talk) 22:45, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2023 and 15 December 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jerry's Middle Finger (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Thetajess26.
— Assignment last updated by Gcampbel (talk) 13:13, 27 October 2023 (UTC)