C. S. Lewis's The Discarded Image paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, as historical and cultural background to the literature of the middle ages and renaissance. It describes the `image' discarded by later ages as `the medieval synthesis itself, the whole organisation of their theology, science and history into a single, complex, harmonious mental model of the universe'. This, Lewis's last book, was hailed as `the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind'.