THE FOUR LOVES IN C. S. LEWIS’S NOVEL “TILL WE HAVE FACES”

The article explores the artistic embodiment of the four types of love that C. S. Lewis dis­cusses in detail in his treatise The Four Loves and in his mythological novel “Till We Have Faces”. Given the centrality of the theme of love in the novel, it is reasonable to assume that in this 1956 work, the author was already artistically reflecting on the ethical and psychological concepts he would later elaborate in the treatise, which was based on a series of radio talks broadcast by Lewis on American radio in 1958. The book “The Four Loves” was published two years later, in 1960. At the same time, the conceptualization of love as a complex and multifaceted phenomenon is already present in the artistic philosophy of the novel under study. This article traces the main features of the literary representation of the notions of friendship, charity, erotic love, and familial love in “Till We Have Faces”. All four forms of love are analyzed at the levels of plot development, the construction of the main female charac­ters (Psyche and Orual), and the philosophical dimension of the mythological novel in the context of the ancient Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, which serves as the narrative founda­tion of the work.