Agreed on The Discarded Image, it really is very good. I've read it together with Huizinga's The Autumn of the Middle Ages and they both provide fascinating insights into not just how people lived but more importantly what they thought. Medieval Europe is absolutely fascinating and it's great to be shown around by someone as erudite as Lewis and Huizinga.
If you liked The Discarded Image, Lewis's book on courtly love (The Allegory of Love) is also very good. Courtly love is such an inscrutable subject for moderns and I only wish more people wrote as intelligently on the subject as Lewis did, since everything from Petrarch's sonnets to the 16th century Madrigals and beyond are only intelligible if one possesses some understanding of how courtly love works. Now if only I have time to read through Gower like Lewis suggested...
If you liked The Discarded Image, Lewis's book on courtly love (The Allegory of Love) is also very good. Courtly love is such an inscrutable subject for moderns and I only wish more people wrote as intelligently on the subject as Lewis did, since everything from Petrarch's sonnets to the 16th century Madrigals and beyond are only intelligible if one possesses some understanding of how courtly love works. Now if only I have time to read through Gower like Lewis suggested...