Two Narnia Articles worth reading.

[yendi]

Lauren Winner's article here (written from an Evangelical Christian POV) rightly nails the fact that Lewis was writing good fantasy, not Christian Allegory. If nothing else, take this passage from the article:

Indeed, Lewis never liked to call the Chronicles "allegory," with the term's implication that every last animal, tree, and chair was simply a cipher, standing for some specific thing in the Bible. He preferred to think of the Chronicles as "supposals"--"Let us suppose," he wrote in his essay "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's to be Said," "that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as He became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen."

And The Chronicle of Higher Education (which is not a seven-book Christian-inspired series about Jesus as a college president) has a nice response to the otherwise-enjoyable Philip Pullman's frothing-at-the-mouth attacks on Narnia. Pullman's one of my favorite writers of fiction, but his stance towards Narnia makes me think that a falling hardcover copy of The Magician's Nephew must have killed his father.

Comments

[stevietee.livejournal.com]

FYI: your Chronicle link requires a user name and password (I conveniently have one, but I would imagine a lot of your readers don't), unless you're on an IP recognized by the Chronicle, such as your workplace.

[yendi]

Ack! I'd forgotten that I was logged in. I've fixed the link with a five-day tag that anyone should be able to use.

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Well if we take the allegory to the logical conclusion then that leaves us with a picture of jesus chasing gazelle.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but only in a playful way. =:o}

[marlowe1.livejournal.com]

Oh of course, cats love playing with their food.

[thefirethorn.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU.

The word is ALLUSION.

There are many biblical allusions in the series -- allusions to the Crucifixion. To the women who alone were with Jesus at the cross. To Moses's murder of an abusive Egyptian. To Elija's vision of the nature of God. To the temptation of the Garden of Eden. To the nativity. I could go on and on.

There are also Christian THEMES. What it's like to follow a vision from God that no one else can see. What it's like to have to follow a comandment from God that makes no sense at the time.

Then there's The Last Battle, which is more of a "I'm sorry, did I hit you with this sledgehammer too hard?" story about another world going through the book of Revelations, but let's just skip that one.

[yendi]

*nod*

In fact, the themes, to me, are what shine through the strongest (notably the very Christian -- in the proper sense -- theme of forgiviness that is crucial to Edmund's storyline).

[theatresm.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the Chronicle link -- posted to my journal.

[yendi]

No problem -- it's an article worth point people to, imho.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

I believe I've seen Winner write about the Chronicles before, and it's always nice to read someone who isn't having tourettic episodes over how omg ev0l Lewis was for letting his faith color his fictional world. I enjoy some of Pullman's work, but his fury over the the Christian elements in the Chronicles is baffling in it's hypocrisy. Pullman's atheism has, by his own admission, has been a defining force in his fiction, so why he objects so strongly to the way that Lewis's beliefs affected Narnia is hard to understand logically. Of course, most of his objections are so out of left field that I am usually left wondering if maybe some dust-jackets got switched in Pullman's library. The stories that he objects so violently to rarely seem to have much in common with the Chronicles. *shrug*

[yendi]

Exactly -- I can see plenty of grounds for criticizing the Chronicles (not least of which is from a literary standpoint -- as many have noted, translating the books into film has meant doing some major fleshing out of characters, as well as making them a lot more active), but Pullman seems to be criticizing some sort of hypothetical Narnia series. I sometimes wonder if he formed his hatred of the novels before reading them, and if this colored how he read them.

[gioiamia.livejournal.com]

I wandered over here thanks to a link on theatresm's journal. Thanks for your fantastic post! Do you mind if I share it with my own LJ f-list? As a CS Lewis nut, I enjoyed both articles as well as your comments about them. ;-)

~ Gioia

[yendi]

Share away!

[gioiamia.livejournal.com]

Thank you!