University of Strathclyde

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CHILDREN'S LITERATURE

The Chronicles of Narnia (1950-56)

"I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story" (C.S. Lewis).

1. C.S. Lewis (1898-1963): b.Belfast; studied Oxford University; fellow of Magdalen College, where he and Tolkien were co-founders of the Inklings; Tolkien helped Lewis regain his Christian faith and Lewis became 'one of the most influential Christian writers of the 20th century' (Children's Books in English, p.423).
1.1 Author of academic and theological works, including: The Pilgrim's Regress (1933); The Allegory of Love (1936); The Problem of Pain (1940); The Screwtape Letters (1942); Studies in Words (1960) and The Discarded Image (1964).
1.2 'Till We Have Faces (1957) is a powerful version of the Cupid and Psyche myth ... and is readable, as are his other fictional works, as allegory. Lewis's other three novels, Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943) and That Hideous Strength (1945), are popularly thought of as belonging to the genre of Science Fiction, although there are elements of the fantastic and Arthurian legend present in them as well. ... [As] with his other works, the trilogy is also significant on the level of Christian allegory' (Children's Books in English, pp.423-4).

2. Allegory:

An allegory is a narrative fiction [in prose or verse] in which the agents and actions, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived to make coherent sense on the "literal," or primary, level of signification, and at the same time to signify a second, correlated order of agents, concepts, and events.
     We can distinguish two main types: (1) Historical and political allegory, in which the characters and actions that are signified literally in their turn represent, or "allegorize," historical personages or events. ... (2) The allegory of ideas, in which the literal characters represent abstract concepts and the plot exemplifies a doctrine or thesis. Both types of allegory may either be sustained throughout a work, as in [John Dryden's] Absalom and Achitophel and John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), or else serve merely as an episode in a non-allegorical work. ...
    The central device in the second type, the sustained allegory of ideas, is the personification of abstract entities such as virtues, vices, states of mind, modes of life, and types of character. In explicit allegories, such reference is specified by the names given to characters and places. Thus Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress allegorizes the Christian doctrines of salvation by telling how the character named Christian, warned by Evangelist, flees the City of Destruction and makes his way laboriously to the Celestial City. (M.H. Abrams, A Glossary of Literary Terms)

3. The Chronicles of Narnia; sequence differs from order of composition/original publication: The Magician's Nephew (1955); The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950); The Horse and His Boy (1954); Prince Caspian (1951); The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952); The Silver Chair (1953); The Last Battle (1956).
3.1 Fantasy/Christian allegory: war between good and evil.
3.2 Overarching Christian allegory: Magician’s Nephew (Genesis: creation and fall); The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Gospels: incarnation of Jesus/Aslan; betrayal by Judas/Edmund; self-sacrifice to redeem mankind/Edmund; resurrection and temporary defeat of Jadis/Satan; establishment of ‘church’); The Last Battle (Book of Revelation).
3.3 Allegory works on two levels: can children understand both levels?
3.4 What are the stakes in this battle between good and evil?

The common denominator in the manifestation of evil found in the various novels is repression, the desire to subjugate and control response. Miraz [in Prince Caspian] tries to repress Old Narnia and knowledge of it and of Aslan, paralleling the White Witch's refusal to allow the name of Aslan to be spoken. It is always winter and never Christmas in Narnia under the witch, symbolising stasis and eternal non-fulfilment, a theme repeated in stone as the witch turns dissenters into statues. ...
    In spite of this sobriety, the novels are also governed by a poetics of desire as indicated by the quest structure within many of the individual works. ... Reepicheep's quest [in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is] the clearest representation of how all quests within the series are tensed towards Aslan and whatever he stands for. ... The Chronicles of Narnia ... are about not just achieving quests, but discovering the true nature of a long desire, naming and identifying it, and in so doing, finding oneself. (Children's Books in English, pp.151-2)

3.5 See Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, 2008).

4. The Magician's Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia (Collins, 2001), pp.7-106): founding of Narnia and theoretical underpinning of whole series.
4.1 Victorian, suburban London; Polly Plummer and Digory Kirke, boy next door (lives with uncle and aunt because his father is in India and his mother is dying); by end of first chapter they've been captured by Uncle Andrew, a wicked magician, and Polly has been transported into another world by magic rings.
4.2 Chronicles of Narnia based on device of parallel worlds/universes and possibility of travelling between them through portals; world of Narnia and surrounding lands one of many parallel worlds; most of the novels involve English children entering Narnia (under Aslan's influence), where they make crucial interventions at moments of crisis and become monarchs and/or heroes.
4.3 Jadis and Uncle Andrew: magic power plus selfishness - treatment of other people as means not ends; lack of empathy; (like children arrested at early stage of psychological development); see themselves as pursuing higher destiny: 'Men like me, who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny' (p.19); a Satan figure in the allegory? (certainly, Jadis is)
4.4 Magic rings; Uncle inherited Atlantean box from 'fairy godmother' that contains dust from another world [cf Pulman]:

"The Atlantean box contained something that had been brought from another world when our world was only just beginning."
    "What? asked Digory, who was now interested in spite of himself.
    "Only dust," said Uncle Andrew. "Fine, dry dust. ... Ah, but when I looked at that dust (I took jolly good care not to touch it) and thought that every grain had once been in another world – I don't mean another planet, you know; they're part of our world and you could get to them if you went far enough – but a really Other World – another Nature – another universe – somewhere you would never reach even if you travelled through the space of this universe for ever and ever – a world that could be reached only by Magic—well!" ...
    "I knew," he went on, "that if only you could get it into the right form, that dust would draw you back to the place it had come from." (pp.20-21)

4.5 Digory follows Polly into other world - courage/capacity for empathy; also plot device.
4.6 Interrtextuality plus self-reflexivity: foregrounds status as children's fiction – references to Sherlock Holmes and Nesbit, plus following outburst from Digory [NB generic conventions; 'literary competance']:

"Very well. I'll go. But there's one thing I jolly well mean to say first. I didn't believe in Magic till today. I see now it's real. Well, if it is, I suppose all the old fairy tales are more or less true. And you're simply a wicked, cruel magician like the ones in the stories. Well, I've never read a story in which people of that sort weren't paid out in the end, and I bet you will be. And serve you right."
    Of all the things Digory had said this was the first that really went home. (p.22)

4.7 Digory finds Polly in place of limbo - junction between many parallel worlds; both prove to be brave and resourceful, but there is a (gender?) difference:

Polly absolutely refused to do any exploring in new worlds until she had made sure about getting back to the old one. She was quite as brave as he about some dangers (wasps, for instance) but she was not so interested in finding out things nobody had ever heard of before; for Digory was the sort of person who wants to know everything, and when he grew up he became the famous Professor Kirke who comes into other books. (p.29)

4.8 Digory's curiosity (cf his uncle); temptation initiates whole train of events – he and Polly (= Adam and Eve?) enter a dead world and room of people turned to statues or suspended in frozen animation, including Jadis, plus a golden bell with a golden hammer alongside some verses they can magically read:

    Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
    Strike the bell and bide the danger,
    Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
    What would have followed if you had.

    "No fear!" said Polly. "We don't want any danger."
    "Oh, but don't you see it's no good?" said Digory. "We can't get out of it now. We shall always be wondering what else would have happened if we had struck the bell." (p.35)

They quarrel; Digory strikes the bell; wakens Jadis, who long ago had destroyed her world by uttering 'the Deplorable Word' (p.41), a weapon of mass destruction that kills all except the utterer [NB date].
4.9 Jadis follows them back into their own world and tries to take over; the children save the world: use magic rings to transport her into a world at the beginning of its evolution – along with a cabbie, his wife, his horse, a lamppost, and Uncle Andrew.

5. Witness Aslan creating life in Narnia – newly created paradise/Garden of Eden; all creatures equal and speak same language.
5.1 Christian allegory, but lots of pagan elements: 'chosen people' = various animals with gift of speech (including cab horse) plus creatures from pagan myth: 'Out of the trees wild people stepped forth, gods, Fauns and Satyrs and Dwarfs. Out of the river rose the river god with his Naiad daughters' (p.71).
5.2 Distinction between the chosen and not chosen; plus founding prohibition:

"Creatures, I give you yourselves," said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. "I give you for ever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself. The Dumb whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so." (p.71)

5.3 The children have brought evil into paradise: '"This is the Boy," said Aslan, looking, not at Digory, but at his councillors. "This is the Boy who did it." ... "Son of Adam," said the Lion. "There is an evil Witch abroad in my new land of Narnia. Tell these good Beasts how she came here"' (p.79).
5.4 Not condemned: they can see and understand what is happening, while Uncle Andrew sees - from his fallen (adult) perspective - only terrifying gathering of roaring beasts; Aslan gives the children, and the cabbie and his wife, a role in helping to overcome the evil:

"But do not be cast down," said Aslan, still speaking to the Beasts. "Evil will come of that evil, but it is still a long way off, and I will see to it that the worst falls upon myself. In the meantime, let us take such order that for many hundred years yet this shall be a merry land in a merry world. And as Adam's race has done the harm, Adam's race shall help to heal it." (p.80)

5.5 Digory and Polly sent on a quest that rewrites Genesis: journey to the Western Wild/garden/bring apple back to Aslan, who will plant it in Narnia.
5.6 The golden gates have a notice on them:

Come in by the gold gates or not at all,
Take of my fruit for others or forbear,
For those who steal or those who climb my wall
Shall find their heart's desire and find despair.

Digory takes one apple, but smells it: 'It would have been better if he had not. A terrible thirst and hunger came over him and a longing to taste that fruit. He put it hastily into his pocket; but there were plenty of others. Could it be wrong to taste one?' (p.92).
5.7 Encounters Jadis, who has just eaten an apple; Digory susceptible to her charms; tells him 'It is the apple of youth, the apple of life', that Aslan is just using him, and one taste of it would cure his mother (p.93); overcomes temptation, though he feels he is losing chance to save his mother; Digory thus helps to protect Narnia at great personal cost.
5.8 Digory sows the apple in Narnia; it grows rapidly to become Narnia's shield; Aslan permits him to pluck an apple from it for his mother; it cures her, he buries the core in the garden, and a tree grows; parents are re-united, and the family goes to live in a big house in the country (Polly visits in the holidays); when Digory is middle-aged professor, tree falls in a storm: uses the wood to make a wardrobe 'And though he himself did not discover the magic properties of that wardrobe, someone else did' (p.106).

6. Rest of series chronicles ongoing battle between good and evil in and around Narnia; culminates in The Last Battle, which in many ways rewrites Book of Revelation.
6.1 In most of the books child protagonists are transported (through Aslan's agency) into world of Narnia at critical points and play decisive parts in struggle against evil; almost like angels from another world, but have parallel lives in parallel worlds.

7. What is nature of the evil that assails Narnia?
7.1 As Children's Books in English suggests, it's partly a moral Puritanism that suppresses joy and pleasure; witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe keeps world in grip of winter in which Christmas never comes; when Christmas does come it's not purely Christian but also pagan; includes cakes and ale - echoes Dickens's A Christmas Carol and pagan midwinter festivals.
7.2 In later novels, source of evil takes on different forms: religious scepticism resisted by life of imagination (The Silver Chair); foreign aggressors with repressive religion whose customs, clothes, names, and weapons make them reminiscent of western views of medieval Arabic world (The Horse and His Boy); in The Last Battle, it is mock religion of the 'Antichrist' which, literally, apes 'Christianity' (Roman Catholicism), aided, abetted and exploited by religious scepticism and false religion of Arab-like Calormenes who worship devil-like Tash (antithesis of Aslan).

8. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
8.1 Names: Peter (Greek: a rock); Susan (Hebrew: a lily); Edmund (Old English: defender of property); Lucy (from Latin: light).
8.2 The allegory?

9. Narrative technique wonderfully adapted to child readers, but what about the religious allegory? Ultimately, despite tinges of racial and religious prejudice, The Chronicles of Narnia promotes moral courage, honesty, love, joy, pleasure and humour.

Seminar

Concentrate on the first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and be prepared to discuss any aspects that you find interesting or revealing.

Be prepared to discuss not only characters and what they say or do, but also narrative technique and symbolic or allegorical import; also think about the connotations of actions, events, places, descriptions, and characters' speeches.

In literary usage, the denotation of a word is its primary significance or reference, such as a dictionary mainly specifies; its connotation is the range of secondary or associated significances and feelings which it commonly suggests or implies. Thus 'home' denotes the house where one lives, but connotes privacy, intimacy, and coziness; that is the reason real estate agents like to use 'home' instead of 'house' in their advertisements. 'Horse' and 'steed' denote the same quadruped, but 'steed' has a different connotation, deriving from the chivalric or romantic narratives in which this word was often used. The connotation of a word is only a potential range of secondary significance; which of these connotations are evoked depends on the way a word is used in a particular context. (Abrams, Glossary of Literary Terms)

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