Prince Caspian

I'm still sorting through my own thoughts before I buckle down to write my NR review, but after spending some time marinating in the Narniaphile reaction, I think that to the extent I liked the movie, it was largely for the same reasons as Frederica Mathewes-Greene: The filmmakers took what is easily the weakest of the Narnia novels, rejiggered the narrative and altered the plot, and produced an entertaining, swashbuckling medieval war movie set against a Narnian backdrop. To the extent that I disliked the movie, meanwhile, it was for the same reasons as Steven Greydanus: In the course of making a poorly-constructed book into an entertaining fantasy adventure, the filmmakers largely purged the original story of its most distinctive thematic elements, and the results owe more to Braveheart and Lord of the Rings, in certain ways, than they do to C.S. Lewis.

Having registered this complaint, though, I can't help be disappointed over Caspian's disappointing box office. Precisely because I've had issues with both of the first two adaptations, I've been looking forward to seeing what a director untainted by the Shrek franchise can do with the later books of Narnia (especially my three favorites), and the worse Caspian does, the greater the chances that it'll be Dawn Treader and out for the franchise.

Comments

Well, I guess the public isn't as hungry for clumsy Christian allegory as you are, Ross.

Meanwhile, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens sure are selling a lot of books.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 19, 2008 2:09 PM

In fairness, the public seems to still be fairly hungry for Christian allegory, clumsy or not. My guess is that they're more tired of Kiwi-style epic fantasy movies.

Posted by Gabriel | May 19, 2008 2:38 PM

Oh, Ross, you are too uncharitable. Perhaps in the minority, I rate Prince Caspian as my favorite, or least one of my top two, of the Chronicles!

Posted by Nathan P. Origer | May 19, 2008 2:49 PM

My Priority List, by Ross Douthat

Important: Children's books, movies about children's books, getting my articles published in National Review, Black people with bigger TV's than me.

Not Important: Iraq, War, Peace, Murder (if committed by Blacks, yes, if committed by US, no), Torture, Black people.

Posted by rickm | May 19, 2008 2:49 PM

So Dilan, how did "The Golden Compass do"? (We rationalists like to compare apples with apples.)

Posted by Jaldhar | May 19, 2008 2:56 PM

You linked to the Magician's Nephew twice. What's your other favorite Narnia book?

Posted by okapi | May 19, 2008 2:59 PM

Come on, rickm, not every blog post has to be about a Very Important Subject. But if you want to be depressed about everything bad in the world at all times, I might direct you to the world of emo.

To be honest, though, I never really cared about the Narnia movies too much. I read the books--all of them, I think--when I was twelve and I remember literally nothing from any of them, aside from a little bit of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, largely because of the 100 times I saw it as a youngster in church. I recall them being reasonably entertaining, but as you can tell, they made virtually no impression on me.

Posted by Lev | May 19, 2008 3:10 PM

Sigh! Narnia isn't allegory. Let's get literate PLEASE. For more detail see DUMMIES.com: Did C.S. Lewis Create Narnia as an Allegory? http://www.dummies.com/WileyCDA/DummiesArticle/id-3206.html

Hope that helps set the record straight. If anyone objects to the so called Christianity in Narnia, that's fine. But at least recognize it for what it is -- an English children's story, much like George MacDonald's Curdie stories and E. Nesbit's stories. Pilgrim's Progress it ain't.

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 19, 2008 3:12 PM

Why are the Narnia books "clumsy?" C.S. Lewis was surely more learned and probably more intelligent than anyone who has ever posted on this blog or any of the other Atlantic blogs. (He also spent his twenties as an atheist, if that raises your opinion of him.)

Of course, that doesn't mean he was necessarily a good writer of fiction (plenty of learned and intelligent people can't write good fiction), but if you're under the impression that he was some kind of ignorant redneck, you're sorely mistaken. If you have more concrete objections to the books (preferably not using the word allegory, since Mr. Harris-Stone's post is fully correct), I would be curious to hear them.

Posted by James Kabala | May 19, 2008 4:11 PM

Hey Dilan,

Hugh Hefner sold a lot of magazines too, so I'm not sure what the fact that Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins sell a lot of books is supposed to mean. Lewis' works were very obviously Christian allegories but there's nothing clumsy about them.

Mr. Origer,

I'm not a particularly big fan of 'Prince Caspian'. My favorite is 'The Silver Chair' though and it would make a great movie- partly because so much of the book's power relies on atmosphere and mood more than plot, and atmosphere and mood are fairly easy to re-create in film.

Have any of you Lewis fans read anything by Charles Williams by the way? You all should.

Posted by Hector | May 19, 2008 4:38 PM

Speaking as a parent, I'm just not that excited about shelling out 40 bucks to take the kids to see Caspian. I think Caspian is probably suffering from being squeezed between Iron Man and Indiana Jones. If we're doing only one big budget Hollywood movie this spring it will be Indy. How many action movies do we really need? Especially in an environment where people are counting their pennies.

I don't think Narnia really holds up for the new generation of young fantasy fans either. Compared to LoTR or Harry Potter the world is underdeveloped and the characters are flat and uninteresting. Really - Harry, Hermione and Ron vs. Peter, Lucy, Edmund, Susan? No contest. My kids read the books but don't seem to care deeply at all about them, not the way I did at that age. I actually gave my 10 and 8 year olds a choice this week-end - would they rather watch the new Doctor Who episodes we had on TiVO or go see Caspian. They chose Doctor Who.

Posted by vanya | May 19, 2008 4:43 PM

Lev: Come on, rickm, not every blog post has to be about a Very Important Subject. But if you want to be depressed about everything bad in the world at all times, I might direct you to the world of emo.

It's simply not believable that Ross Douthat has no opinion about Iraq, the War on Terror, etc. He actively goes out of his way to avoid any commentary on those topics, for reasons we can all speculate on, and it's pretty shameful.

Posted by Korha | May 19, 2008 4:59 PM

> "the worse Caspian does, the greater the chances that it'll be Dawn Treader and out for the franchise"

My two demigalleons' worth here here.

> "how did The Golden Compass do? (We rationalists like to compare apples with apples.)"

To be fair, "Contact" (based on Carl Sagan's novel) was THE smash hit of 1997, proving that the public does hunger for atheist stories that show how a truth-claim is demonstrably false false if it can't be scientifically replicated under laboratory conditions.

Posted by Tom R | May 19, 2008 5:14 PM

'Prince Caspian' is the weakest of the series? What about the horrifyingly racist Apocalypse that is 'The Last Battle'?

Posted by Adrian | May 19, 2008 5:15 PM

Haven't seen the movie, but the Greydanus review was well done. I'm an agnostic, but I'm sure the subtle changes that he identified would irk me. One of the most interesting things about the Nania books is that they provide a frame in which Christian theology is believable and attractive. The myth vs. materialism aspect was a central theme of the book, which culiminates with the River God destroying the Beruna Bridge. Taking that away is like taking away Aslan's sacrifice in LWW -- it's the core theological lesson. Without it, it's just an adventure story. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I prefer an adventure story that means something (even if it's something I don't believe).

Posted by Led | May 19, 2008 5:28 PM

I wonder if part of the problems at the box office could be due to the mistargeted marketing. It's rated PG and when I saw it the theater was full of parents with young children (10 and younger). But it was one of the most violent films I've seen in a long time. Not gory, but incredibly violent.

Posted by someBrad | May 19, 2008 6:21 PM

"What about the horrifyingly racist Apocalypse that is 'The Last Battle'?"

It does show cats and apes in a bad light--I resented that.

There is one comment in the book that is racist--where the King says "now we are white Narnians again." Cringeworthy, but this was written in the early 50's. Other than that, it's clear that the Calormenes are no more intrinsically evil than anyone else--in fact, Lewis takes the opportunity to make a case for members of all religions having a chance of getting into heaven if their hearts are right and one of the good guys is a Calormene prince. Not interesting if you're not religious in any way, but it's much more liberal a view than you'd find in many of Lewis's evangelical fans.

Posted by Anon | May 19, 2008 7:34 PM

Re: To be fair, "Contact" (based on Carl Sagan's novel) was THE smash hit of 1997, proving that the public does hunger for atheist stories that show how a truth-claim is demonstrably false false if it can't be scientifically replicated under laboratory conditions.

I don't recall "Contact" being an atheist movie. Though my memories of it are hopelessly entwined by my memories of the book-- which did pillory Fundamentalists, but which also bent over backwards to present a sympathetic (non-Fundamentalist) preacher and ended up with the possibility (based on pure mathematics no less) that there really is Something Else above and beyond everything else.

Posted by JonF | May 19, 2008 8:26 PM

Critic #1:

Sigh! Narnia isn't allegory. Let's get literate PLEASE. For more detail see DUMMIES.com: Did C.S. Lewis Create Narnia as an Allegory?

Critic #2:

(preferably not using the word allegory, since Mr. Harris-Stone's post is fully correct)

Critic #3:

Lewis' works were very obviously Christian allegories but there's nothing clumsy about them.

You guys need to get your talking points straight.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 19, 2008 9:01 PM

With respect to the merits of the Narnia books, let's just say that I am sure that "Left Behind" has its fans too. That Rapture is really exciting fiction, you know.

To the person who talked about how brillaint C.S. Lewis was, look, Ross Douthat is brilliant too. I would never in a million years claim that there aren't a lot of brilliant religious people out there. That doesn't, however, mean that belief in the tales of organized religion is itself a sign of brilliance. It just points out that Pascal's Wager is really attractive to many people, including intelligent ones (Pascal himself, after all, was one of the most brilliant people who ever lived). What's sad is non-brilliant religious people pointing to the intelligence of a CS Lewis and pretending that he confers some sort of intellectual confirmation on their own religious beliefs.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 19, 2008 9:06 PM

JonF:
In Contact the movie, the Ellie Arroway character is clearly shown as doubting the existence of God, and it becomes kind of a recurring theme. I haven't read the book so I don't know if it's the same.

I'm with Ross, I hope Caspian and Dawn Trader do well enough that they make it to the real prize, which is The Magician's Nephew.

Posted by thisiscmt | May 19, 2008 9:14 PM

Dilan: Hector is also wrong. He may be arguing on the same side as I am on the question of the general quality of the books, but he is still wrong. Hector and I agree on very little, so just because we happen to like these books, don't assume we're reading from some kind of master list of "talking points."

Also, your other post misinterpreted mine, but it's not worth arguing over.

Posted by James Kabala | May 19, 2008 9:46 PM

Speaking of The Magician's Nephew, one should note that Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill looks exactly like Uncle Andrew.

It's been a long time since I've seen Contact, but I thought the point was that an atheist scientist has a very powerful spiritual experience for which there is no evidence outside of her own subjective experience, forcing her to confront the potential limits of science. So the movie seemed to me to advocate, as Oliver Holmes, Jr. said of William James, "turning down the lights so as to give miracles a chance."

Posted by Led | May 19, 2008 9:49 PM

an atheist scientist has a very powerful spiritual experience for which there is no evidence outside of her own subjective experience

There was that "18 hours of video" that was recorded during her "instantaneous" trip. So, there is SOME evidence, but of course, the gov't is keeping that under wraps.

Posted by tom.a | May 19, 2008 10:19 PM

James:

To be clear, the reason I used "talking points" is because the "Narnia isn't allegory" mantra is one. It's kind of like when a Ron Paul-bot denounces anyone who calls Rep. Paul an isolationist, saying he is a noninterventionist instead. It's just a learned Pavlovian stimulus-response talking point, based on a definitional issue that is silly.

It is true, C.S. Lewis hated when Narnia was called Christian allegory. But guess what, he wrote books which clearly analogized the events in the fantasy universe he created to the events in the Bible. And he totally knew this was what he was doing; in fact, he was an adult convert to Christianity with the evangelical zeal of a convert.

So I call Narnia Christian allegory precisely because it pisses off the more devout faction of the fans of Lewis' work. It's a dog whistle to them.

And as for whether the shoe fits-- let's put it this way: while Lewis did incorporate aspects of other non-Christian traditions into Narnia, Lewis wasn't going to put the central events of the Koran into a children's work that might promote THAT religion.

Narnia is no better than "Left Behind". It just attracts a more psuedo-intellectual Christian than Tim LaHaye does.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 20, 2008 12:08 AM

Dilan Esper: "So I call Narnia Christian allegory precisely because it pisses off the more devout faction of the fans of Lewis' work. It's a dog whistle to them."

Oh, wow, Dilan, you sure showed us. Man, you're such an intellectual (you see, because you're anti-religion; secular=intellectual, QED). I guess us silly pseudo-intellectuals (I think that's how you spell that) will just stick to our opium that is no better than the Left Behind series because it promotes a certain world-view. I guess you feel that way about all stories, then (because what novel doesn't promote a world-view?)...you must lead an interesting life.

Posted by Philip Marlowe | May 20, 2008 12:31 AM

"Meanwhile, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens sure are selling a lot of books." DE

TR: I don't think "disappointing" quite means "bomb." The first made $65,556,312 in its first week while this one made $55 million in its first week. The film will almost certainly turn a profit, it just won't be a major hit.

Books are largely solitary entertainments with lower overhead. If a book reaches a million readers it's a hit while a movie that sells a million tickets may well be considered a bomb. Do you really think the combined number of people who've read Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens equals those who watched this movie? Or that it even equals the number who watched "Joan of Arcadia" on any given week?

That said I didn't care for the one Narnia book I read. Once I read more about him I could see why. Lewis was much too influenced by European paganism for my taste. His Christianity fell into certain Medieval patterns of unorthodoxy that I don't relate to. Also he was a bit too interested in creepy crud. Lastly I don't like Fantasy.

Posted by Thomas R | May 20, 2008 5:09 AM

Re: His Christianity fell into certain Medieval patterns of unorthodoxy that I don't relate to.

???
Can you exapnd on the above, Thomas? Lewis struck me as fairly Platonic in his outlook, but that's not necessarily unorthodox since pre-Aquinas (and to this day in the East) Christian theology was largely neo-Platonic.
Lewis' acceptance of various Pagan gods, sprites etc. has some echo in the early church fathers who also speculated that the Pagan gods might be distorted recollections of angels, or even angelic spirits that somehow became earthbound but not necessarily malefic. (The Orthodox icon of the Baptism of Christ sometimes shows a river god in the Jordan looking on the scene with wonder.)

Posted by JonF | May 20, 2008 7:26 AM

Well the Pagan gods might be angels, but if so (and I'm meaning the pantheons he discussed) then many of them were pretty poor excuses for angels. They committed adultery, bashed each other upside the head, etc.

That doesn't mean they're malefic exactly, but I just never found them very admirable or even all that interesting. His sympathy with pagan Greece or Norseland is not something I can relate to. (Oddly I don't universally find "paganism" unsympathetic. Some African, Asian, and American Indian gods seem wise/admirable to me) I believe some of the early Christians believed the Greek gods were exaggerated versions of long-forgotten royals. I don't think that's historically valid, but their character does seem more like "humans writ large" than higher beings.

Plus he was interested in astrology. So were many Medieval Popes, but I think they were incorrect as well.

Posted by Thomas R | May 20, 2008 8:30 AM

So is a book that promotes a Christian worldview necessarily bad? Dislike Narnia all you want - it is only a children's book series, after all, and there are better ones - but would you go even farther and reject The Divine Comedy or Crime and Punishment out of hand?

And you misunderstand the "Narnia isn't an allegory" point: It isn't an allegory because Aslan isn't supposed to represent Jesus; he actually is supposed to be Jesus. So from your point of view, it's even worse than you thought.

Posted by James Kabala | May 20, 2008 9:36 AM

"So I call Narnia Christian allegory precisely because it pisses off the more devout faction of the fans of Lewis' work. It's a dog whistle to them."

Ahem. You've yet to offer a substantial criticism of Narnia, other than that you don't like it, which is fine, and now you insist on asserting your own superiority by claiming to have manipulated our comments. My aren't you clever...and perhaps insecure? FWIW, I'm quite happy to read ficition by atheists like Ian McEwan. I'm even a fan. What does piss me off though is when things are misrepresented. I believe it used to be called prejudice.

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 20, 2008 10:11 AM

[someBrad] it was one of the most violent films I've seen in a long time. Not gory, but incredibly violent.

Well, the story is violent...not gory, but violent.

I haven't seen this movie yet, but I think the first movie left a LOT of money on the table by keeping the story PG. A PG-13 rating would have brought in more of the 14-25 crowd. I respect that since the books themselves are directed toward 8-12 year olds.

Some how I suspect that "Prince Caspian", with its war theme suffered from this debilitation even more.

Posted by someBrad | May 20, 2008 10:50 AM

Actually, 'The Horse and His Boy' may be more racist than 'The Last Battle.'

Of course the Narnia books are Christian allegory. Anyone who says otherwise cannot be taken seriously.

Posted by Adrian | May 20, 2008 10:54 AM

That last post was me. Not someBrad.

So I call Narnia Christian allegory precisely because it pisses off the more devout faction of the fans of Lewis' work.

The people you are pissing off are literate people who have read read the books. You justify calling the series "Christian allegory" because it contains elements of Christian "analogy". That's just dumb.

Posted by Jim | May 20, 2008 10:56 AM

[Adrian]Actually, 'The Horse and His Boy' may be more racist than 'The Last Battle.' Of course the Narnia books are Christian allegory. Anyone who says otherwise cannot be taken seriously.

You don't know what you are talking about. See the post by James Kabala above. What is "Prince Caspian" an allegory for? What is "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" an allegory for? An allegory is like "Pilgrim's Progress" where you have a puzzle and all the elements have a "key".

Calling "The Last Battle" racist suggests you never made it through the book or just aren't a very perceptive reader. Nothing in the Narnia series is as "racist" as Lord of the Rings, or the works of H. Rider Haggard's novels, Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Jules Verne, or Charles Dickens. How sad that some people cannot enjoy anything written after 1970 because before then culture and skin color were acknowledged accepted as being regionally distributed.

Posted by Jim | May 20, 2008 11:07 AM

"Of course the Narnia books are Christian allegory. Anyone who says otherwise cannot be taken seriously."

Anyone who makes arguments as compelling as this one won't be taken seriously. At least not by me. :-)

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 20, 2008 12:06 PM

I'm a little perplexed by that "Dummies" article.

"An allegory is a literary device in which an author uses the form of a person, place, or animal to represent an abstract idea ... A slightly broader definition of allegory applies when an author represents real people or places in a fictional context."

So when Lewis "supposes" Jesus as a Lion in Narnia, it's not allegory because ... Lewis thought Narnia was not a fictional context? He thought Jesus was not a real person? That seems pretty shaky ground to me.

Posted by Tel | May 20, 2008 12:06 PM

So is a book that promotes a Christian worldview necessarily bad? Dislike Narnia all you want - it is only a children's book series, after all, and there are better ones - but would you go even farther and reject The Divine Comedy or Crime and Punishment out of hand?

No way. But, you know, C.S. Lewis (and Tim LaHaye) aren't exactly at the level of Dante, Milton, or Dostoyevsky.

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 20, 2008 1:43 PM

Dilan,

Arguing about literary taste always seems somewhat sterile to me, perhaps that's one reason I stayed away from lit. classes is college (with the exception of the abombinable Core Curriculum). But have you actually read the Lewis books? Never mind the 'Wardrobe' one, have you tried reading 'The Silver Chair'? It addresses the central question of _faith_ in a way that can speak to an adult or a child equally and that still speaks to me even in my mid-20s.

Perhaps the problem is you don't like children's fantasy in general. That's reasonable (although I do like that style). Have you tried reading Lewis' adult fiction, the 'Perelandra' trilogy? You'll probably hate what he has to say about feminism, but you should try them. Have you read anything by Lewis' friend Charles Williams? To take a more modern perspective, are you capable of appreciating 'The Life of Pi'? 'The Heart of the Matter'? Or to take an agnostic who took religion seriously, have you read and appreciate anything by Borges?

Posted by Hector | May 20, 2008 1:57 PM

speaking of 'The Silver Chair', I love the atmosphere and mood in that book too- everything from the bleak moor landscape to the deliciously creepy and twisted sexuality of the Green Lady. You should read it, Dilan, it's really well done for a children's book.

Posted by Hector | May 20, 2008 2:05 PM

"So when Lewis "supposes" Jesus as a Lion in Narnia, it's not allegory because ... Lewis thought Narnia was not a fictional context? He thought Jesus was not a real person? That seems pretty shaky ground to me."

Actually, that would be the point. Aslan ISN'T Jesus. The article says:

"By using supposal, Lewis doesn't feel compelled to have a DIRECT 1 to-1 CORRELATION between the experiences of Aslan and the real life of Jesus Christ. In his letter to Sophia Storr, Lewis talks of this freedom: "When I started The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I don't think I foresaw what Aslan was going to do and suffer. I think He just insisted on behaving in His own way." (CAPS Mine)

Allegory is way more rigorous than what Lewis does with Aslan. In fact, the death and resurrection scene in Wardrobe only saves one person, not a world. Some Christians may think Aslan is Christ, etc. but he isn't. He's a fictional character. When I read the Narnia stories, I never read Aslan and think Jesus. They're just too different.

From a literary standpoint, Narnia stands firmly in a tradition of British children's stories. It's not nearly as religious as AMERICAN commentators seem to think. If it was, so many non-Christians would not enjoy it.

By the way Dilan, in the literary world Lewis is very respected in general as a critic and a writer. Naria isn't the greatest children's lit. every by any means, but it sure isn't cr*p like Tim LaHaye's work. And by the way, just because I'm posting here, don't take me to be any more of a conservative than you are!

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 20, 2008 2:06 PM

Let me try to explain it a different way.

An allegory written about Christ or Martin Luther King or anyone else would be ABOUT that person or subject.

Narnia isn't ABOUT Jesus Christ. It's ABOUT Narnia, this fantasy world that embodies, to a certain extent, the writer's dreams. Narnia is full of all sorts of things CS Lewis the person liked. Sure, there is some Christianity in there but more than that there is MYTH which is what Lewis LOVED more than anything else. Narnia, the world, is flat, literally. In Prince Caspian, the book, Aslan calls up the greek god Bacchus who provides wine for everyone, including the children to drink. The film makers left this bit out. Who is the conservative there?

What Lewis was trying to do with his readers was to reinvoke a sense of wonder and mystery in the real world that he felt had been lost, but which is present in the older literature on which he was an expert. Narnia isn't about Jesus, it's about Myth. And it isn't allegorical, AT ALL.

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 20, 2008 2:34 PM

"It is true, C.S. Lewis hated when Narnia was called Christian allegory. But guess what, he wrote books which clearly analogized the events in the fantasy universe he created to the events in the Bible."

Oh, and which events in the books "analogize" events in the Bible? Let's see. There are seven books in the Narnia series. There should be dozens of events which fit the Bible. Which are they? Aslan dies for someone else and is resurrected. OK, that's like Jesus, but not quite. If it was really like Jesus, the good Narnians, his own people should plead to the Witch to kill him and the death should be an atonement and Aslan should say, "forgive them father, they don't know what they're doing." Not there? Hmm, Lewis wasn't very good at this analog stuff was he. Now, lets see what else. Father Christmas...well he's not in the Bible. Adam and Eve? Sort of, but imported from a different world and they didn't eat an apple. What else? Hello, can anyone help me here!

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 20, 2008 3:19 PM

Lewis's The Great Divorce is also an excellent work meant for adults.

Posted by James Kabala | May 20, 2008 3:41 PM

To add to the allegory debate: I can see why Lewis resisted calling the Narnia series an allegory. Technically, it isn't. Lewis was an Oxford professor of medieval literature. For a medievalist, an allegory is a specific kind of tale, typically in verse form, with characters that embody virtues or ideas. Hence, in Paul Bunyon's Pilgrim's Progress, the main character is named Christian, and he encounters places like Vanity Fair. Other allegories give personification to Death or Pride or Grace, etc. It's kind of like how for a medievalist the term romance denotes an entirely different kind of text than it does for people today; a medieval romance typically focuses on the adventures of knights and King Arthur's court.

I'd say that Lewis was following a well established structure for children's literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that used elements of fairy tale and the supernatural to, at times, present a moral lesson. He's also drawing from popular adventure stories. Of course, because Lewis was a medievalist, his fiction is informed by his work in that field; so is Tolkein's for that matter. So in some ways the Narnia series does feel allegorical, at least does to me and it did when I read the whole series in one day at the age of 10. And, mind you, this is all literary hair splitting. It's awfully hard to shoehorn any text into one particular niche.

Posted by LL | May 20, 2008 3:55 PM

Arguing about literary taste always seems somewhat sterile to me, perhaps that's one reason I stayed away from lit. classes is college (with the exception of the abombinable Core Curriculum). But have you actually read the Lewis books? Never mind the 'Wardrobe' one, have you tried reading 'The Silver Chair'?

I read Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 2nd grade and the others a couple of years later because we had a son of wealthy evangelicals attending our elementary school and he was giving the books out in some misguided attempt to convert everyone to Christianity. I found the books predictable, with silly plotlines.

I went back and read Wardrobe again when I was a teenager, because some friends liked the books and said I was giving them short shrift. I still didn't like it. It has the forced quality of the worst sort of children's literature (or Disney), where fantastic plot devices are conjured up because they seem other-worldly, but with no real creativity. I guess a lot of young kids like that thing. And by then, I really found the Christian allegory obvious and stupid.

And I say this as someone who liked some literature of the same broad fantasy genre (such as "The Hobbit").

Posted by Dilan Esper | May 20, 2008 7:06 PM

Of course the Narnia books are racist ...and people who say otherwise are most likely racists.

I'm not saying I don't like Narnia, I love the series and I practically grew up in Narnia. I'm just saying C.S. Lewis was a flaming, flagrant racist. Yes, Tolkien was probably a racist too.

The real point is that English Christianity is mostly obscene. From English Catholics, to Anglo-Catholic Anglicans (both traditionalist and liberal), to evangelical Anglicans to the many non-Conformist sects. They are all gross.

Working Class and old line English Catholics are cool - but the high brow converts that came out of the Oxford Movement were all pretentious aesthetes. Obviously the Middle Ages gave the Tractarians boners - the fancy churches, the incense and the mumbo-jumbo were a way of connecting to a Fairy Tale medieval past.

Needless to say, the Anglican Communion is a monstrosity. It really must break up into different bodies, Anglocatholic, evangelical, etc. Why bother preserve the integrity of the Communion when the Communion itself is a schismatic abomination? Let's remember, if the Pope had let Hank VIII continue his matrimonial rampage, there wouldn't even be an Anglican Church.

As for non-Conformism, two words: Salvation Army.

Posted by AJ | May 20, 2008 9:14 PM

I hated The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe (film) and so I refuse to even watch anything else the franchise produces. I love all of the books (my favorite three are the same as Ross's), so I think it's pretty sickening how the filmmakers have deliberately changed the tone of the books in order to pander to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter audiences, when clearly there's very little resemblance between the franchises outside a handful of mythical / magical elements, which are even then differently portrayed. And I actually feel the Christian allegory is considerably more clumsy and abrasive in the film than it is in the books. I felt like every second of the first film was screaming "ASLAN IS JESUS ASLAN IS JESUS" at me, whereas in the books the allegory is usually fairly easy to ignore. (Except for the rather bizarre interlude near the end of Voyage of the Dawn Treader [?] when Aslan turns into a lamb... a completely unnecessary and too-blatant religious allusion.)

Also, I don't understand this quibbling over the use of "allegory". Clearly, as most people use the word, the Chronicles of Narnia are allegorical. I'm sure one can create definitions of "allegory" from which Narnia would be excluded, but for the sake of a blog comments discussion can't we dispense with formal literary definitions and call spades "spades", eh?

And I wouldn't agree that Lewis was racist (nor Tolkien, for that matter). I think they just lived in a time when cultural and ethnic sensitivy was considered less important, and excessive pride in one's own heritage was over-valued. This second point is especially why they come across as "racist": not because they thought other peoples and culures were *bad*, but because they had an unrealistically high estimation of their own culture's "goodness". I suspect if they were alive today they would distance themselves from a great many of their portrayals of foreign societies and peoples.

Posted by Seth | May 20, 2008 10:59 PM

Dilan,

One thing I've learned as a writer is that what is "good" is actually very subjective. One person's masterpiece is another person's trash. So I can fully appreciate one not liking the Narnia books.

I first read them at 13 (in 1976) and loved them. I still like them, but they aren't the first thing on the shelf I'd reach for. My favorite children's series at the moment is Harry Potter. I'm also fond of Michael Ende, Roald Dahl and lots of others. On the adult side I like Ian McEwan, Denis Johnson, Don Delillo, Annie Dillard and more.

As to using Narnia to try to convert people...I think Lewis himself, who describe his own conversion as "reluctant" had far too much respect for people and their thinking and choices to think that a single book or series of books would convert them or for that matter that you could convert anyone who didn't want to. He obviously was happy to explain, in as rigourous a manner as he could, his own faith, but in writing Narnia I think he was after something entirely. He and the other Inklings had a project to write the sort of stories which they themselves wanted to read.

While I would disagree with you on creativity in Narnia, I can totally understand it not being your cup of tea and certainly there are many, many others who share your opinion! :-)

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 20, 2008 11:02 PM

"Also, I don't understand this quibbling over the use of "allegory". Clearly, as most people use the word, the Chronicles of Narnia are allegorical. I'm sure one can create definitions of "allegory" from which Narnia would be excluded, but for the sake of a blog comments discussion can't we dispense with formal literary definitions and call spades "spades", eh?"

If Narnia is allegorical, then so is Moby Dick, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland and pretty much everything else in literature. But people don't call them alegorical. They call Narnia alegorical because there is CHRISTIAN symbolism in it. Are the three books of "His Dark Materials" alegorical too?

My main objection is this sloppy thinking is used to justify dismissing the books, i.e. they aren't real literature because their old fashioned, clumsy and allegorical -- its a sly put down -- when the real issue is someone doesn't like Christianity. If you don't believe me, check out the reviews for the films on Rotten Tomatoes. It isn't hard to spot the folks who don't like it because its got Christianity in it. It's fine not to like Christianity...millions of people don't like Christianity. And there are good reasons not to. However, calling something a name with a negative connotation as a way to pigeonhole it, to dismiss it, to legitimize one's dislike is simply pure manipulation.

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 20, 2008 11:15 PM

Dilan writes: "Narnia is no better than "Left Behind". It just attracts a more psuedo-intellectual Christian than Tim LaHaye does."

I wouldn't go that far. The Left Behind books are simply fundie porn - and if you're in the right mood they're hilarious shit, like Jack Chick tracts without the drawings. I read the entire series and I don't regret it. The books are garbage but file it under "know thine enemy."

Tolkien considered the Narnia books to be allegories and didn't care much for them for that reason, and he was right. Tolkien was a devout Catholic who overcame that disability and created a fantastic scaffold for his own books which avoided the stink of allegory.

But the Narnia books aren't just fundie porn... they're slightly better than that because they're really just books for kids and are more Oz rip-offs than they are Chick tracts.

Let's put it this way - take a bunch of 15 year old kids, have them read the Narnia books and the Tolkien trilogy, and then separate them into two groups based on which author they prefer. I'm guessing the Tolkien fans will be the brighter bunch by far.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | May 21, 2008 2:02 AM

Mike Harris-Stone wonders: "If Narnia is allegorical, then so is Moby Dick, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland and pretty much everything else in literature. But people don't call them alegorical. They call Narnia alegorical because there is CHRISTIAN symbolism in it. Are the three books of "His Dark Materials" alegorical too?"

And what, pray tell, are they allegorical(the actual spelling) TO, chuckles?

Do you lack a basic understanding of what allegory is? Go back to school, or go there in the first place,if you were homeschooled by homeless people. In any event you're not making any sense.

Saying something is an example of allegory isn't an insult, chuckles, it's a description. Deal with it.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | May 21, 2008 2:44 AM

"If Narnia is allegorical, then so is Moby Dick, Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland"

TR: Quite possibly, so what?

I'm surprised this is a discussion. Or that calling something "an allegory" would even be perceived as an insult. Some of the greatest works in literary history were allegories. Going from the ancient Greeks to Orwell.

Posted by Thomas R | May 21, 2008 4:36 AM

AJ, Dilan, and Seth,

C.S. Lewis certainly wasn't a 'racist', and he was a strong critic of British imperialism. Read 'That Hideous Strength' where he compares Cecil Rhodes to Mordred, or one of his other essays where he says something like 'the stink of the white man's crimes go up to high heaven' (describing imperialism and colonialism). Lewis isn't even fairly described as a conservative in the modern American sense, since he was highly critical of capitalist economics, going so far to suggest that it violated, in spirit, the Christian prohibition of usury.

Lewis' fiction was favorably, if critically, regarded by some agnostic contemporaries of his including George Orwell and J.B.S. Haldane. Haldane, a Communist, appreciated Lewis' anti-capitalist sentiments but was annoyed that he didn't go further, and ended his review by saying 'Mammon has been banished from a sixth of the world's surface [i.e. Russia]. It was men, not angels, who cast him out." Lewis then responded, "When Mammon is banished, what happens if Moloch takes his throne?" Great rhetoric.

So my point being, if people like Haldane and Orwell could appreciate Lewis' fiction it's pretty silly that you guys cannot.

AJ,

I'm an Anglican of the Anglo-Catholic side and your post is silliness of the first order. Just because you are not able to see the value in something, doesn't mean it is without value.

Posted by Hector | May 21, 2008 8:29 AM

Hector, here's Orwell's rather tepid endorsement of Lewis's (not-so-enduring) "That Hideous Strength":

"The Scientist Takes Over

review of C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (1945)

by George Orwell

Manchester Evening News, 16 August 1945

Reprinted as No. 2720 (first half) in The Complete Works of George Orwell, edited by Peter Davison, Vol. XVII (1998), pp. 250–251

On the whole, novels are better when there are no miracles in them. Still, it is possible to think of a fairly large number of worth-while books in which ghosts, magic, second-sight, angels, mermaids, and what-not play a part.

Mr. C. S. Lewis’s “That Hideous Strength” can be included in their number – though, curiously enough, it would probably have been a better book if the magical element had been left out. For in essence it is a crime story, and the miraculous happenings, though they grow more frequent towards the end, are not integral to it.

In general outline, and to some extent in atmosphere, it rather resembles G. K. Chesterton’s “The Man Who Was Thursday.”

Mr. Lewis probably owes something to Chesterton as a writer, and certainly shares his horror of modern machine civilisation (the title of the book, by the way, is taken from a poem about the Tower of Babel) and his reliance on the “eternal verities” of the Christian Church, as against scientific materialism or nihilism.

His book describes the struggle of a little group of sane people against a nightmare that nearly conquers the world. A company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the universe under their control.

All superfluous life is to be wiped out, all natural forces tamed, the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists, who even see their way to conferring immortal life upon themselves. Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even to become a god himself.

There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy. Indeed, at a moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced “obsolete” – has just blown probably three hundred thousand paople to fragments, it sounds all too topical. Plenty of people in our age do entertain the monstrous dreams of power that Mr. Lewis attributes to his characters, and we are within sight of the time when such dreams will be realisable.

His description of the N.I.C.E. (National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments), with its world-wide ramifications, its private army, its secret torture chambers, and its inner ring of adepts ruled over by a mysterious personage known as The Head, is as exciting as any detective story.

It would be a very hardened reader who would not experience a thrill on learning that The Head is actually – however, that would be giving the game away.

One could recommend this book ureservedly if Mr. Lewis had succeeded in keeping it all on a single level. Unfortunately, the supernatural keeps breaking in, and it does so in rather confusing, undisciplined ways. The scientists are endeavouring, among other things, to get hold of the body of the ancient Celtic magician Merlin, who has been buried – not dead, but in a trance – for the last 1,500 years, in hopes of learning from him the secrets of pre-Christian magic.

They are frustrated by a character who is only doubtfully a human being, having spent part of his time on another planet where he has been gifted with eternal youth. Then there is a woman with second sight, one or two ghosts, and various superhuman visitors from outer space, some of them with rather tiresome names which derive from earlier books of Mr. Lewis’s. The book ends in a way that is so preposterous that it does not even succeed in being horrible in spite of much bloodshed.

Much is made of the fact that the scientists are actually in touch with evil spirits, although this fact is known only to the inmost circle. Mr. Lewis appears to believe in the existence of such spirits, and of benevolent ones as well. He is entitled to his beliefs, but they weaken his story, not only because they offend the average reader’s sense of probability but because in effect they decide the issue in advance. When one is told that God and the Devil are in conflict one always knows which side is going to win. The whole drama of the struggle against evil lies in the fact that one does not have supernatural aid. However, by the standard of the novels appearing nowadays this is a book worth reading."

Now you may try to convince yourself that Orwell thought this was a good book, but I've read everything I could find by Orwell, and let's just say he was being maliciously kind here and leave it at that.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | May 22, 2008 2:19 AM

And here's another one, Hector, even more scathing:

"As I Please
in Tribune
27 October 1944
George Orwell

READING, a week or two ago, Mr C. S. Lewis’s recently-published book, Beyond Personality (it is a series of reprinted broadcasts on theology), I learned from the blurb on the dust jacket that a critic who should, and indeed does, know better had likened an earlier book, The Screwtape Letters, to The Pilgrim’s Progress. ‘I do not hesitate to compare Mr Lewis’s achievement with Pilgrim’s Progress’ were his quoted words. Here is a sample, entirely representative, from the later book:

Well, even on the human level, you know, there are two kinds of pretending. There’s a bad kind, where the pretence is instead of the real thing, as when a man pretends he’s going to help you instead of really helping you. But there’s also a good kind, where the pretence leads up to the real thing. When you’re not feeling particularly friendly but know you ought to be, the best thing you can do, very often, is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a much nicer chap than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we’ve all noticed. you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often the only way to get a quality is to start behaving as if you had it already. That’s why children’s games are so important. They’re always pretending to be grown-ups—playing soldiers, playing shop. But all the time they are hardening their muscles and sharpening their wits, so that the pretence of being grown-ups helps them in earnest.

The book is like this all the way through, and I think most of us would hesitate a long time before equating Mr Lewis with Bunyan. One must make some allowance for the fact that these essays are reprinted broadcasts, but even on the air it is not really necessary to insult your hearers with homey little asides like ‘you know’ and ‘mind you’, or Edwardian slang like ‘awfully’, ‘jolly well’, ‘specially’ for ’especially’, ‘awful cheek’ and so forth. The idea, of course, is to persuade the suspicious reader, or listener, that one can be a Christian and a ‘jolly good chap’ at the same time. I don’t imagine that the attempt would have much success, and in any case the cotton wool with which the B.B.C. stuffs its speakers’ mouths makes any real discussion of theological problems impossible, even from an orthodox angle. But Mr Lewis’s vogue at this moment, the time allowed to him on the air and the exaggerated praise he has received, are bad symptoms and worth noticing.

Students of popular religious apologetics will notice early in the book a side-kick at ‘all these people who turn up every few years with some patent simplified religion of their own’, and various hints that unbelief is ‘out of date’, ‘old-fashioned’ and so forth. And they will remember Ronald Knox saying much the same thing fifteen years ago, and R. H. Benson twenty or thirty years before that, and they will know in which pigeon-hole Mr Lewis should be placed.

A kind of book that has been endemic in England for quite sixty years is the silly-clever religious book, which goes on the principle not of threatening the unbeliever with Hell, but of showing him up as an illogical ass, incapable of clear thought and unaware that everything he says has been said and refuted before. This school of literature started, I think, with W. H. Mallock’s New Republic, which must have been written about 1880, and it has had a long line of practitioners—R. H. Benson, Chesterton, Father Knox, ‘Beachcomber’ and others, most of them Catholics, but some, like Dr Cyril Alington and (I suspect) Mr Lewis himself, Anglicans. The line of attack is always the same. Every heresy has been uttered before (with the implication that it has also been refuted before); and theology is only understood by theologians (with the implication that you should leave your thinking to the priests). Along these lines one can, of course, have a lot of clean fun by ‘correcting loose thinking’ and pointing out that so-and-so is only saying what Pelagius said in A.D. 400 (or whenever it was), and has in any case used the word transubstantiation in the wrong sense. The special targets of these people have been T. H. Huxley, H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Professor Joad, and others who are associated in the popular mind with Science and Rationalism. They have never had much difficulty in demolishing them—though I notice that most of the demolished ones are still there, while some of the Christian apologists themselves begin to look rather faded.

One reason for the extravagant boosting that these people always get in the press is that their political affiliations are invariably reactionary. Some of them were frank admirers of Fascism as long as it was safe to be so. That is why I draw attention to Mr C. S. Lewis and his chummy little wireless talks, of which no doubt there will be more. They are not really so unpolitical as they are meant to look. Indeed they are an out-flanking movement in the big counter-attack against the Left which Lord Elton. A. P. Herbert. G. M. Young, Alfred Noyes and various others have been conducting for two years past. "

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | May 22, 2008 2:24 AM

In any event, Hec, I'd be interested to see any proof you have for your assertion that "Lewis' fiction was favorably, if critically, regarded by some agnostic contemporaries of his including George Orwell." I think this is a seriously flawed claim that you won't be able to support.

Orwell is one of the best British writers of the 20th century. Lewis is nowhere near that class, and most of his work is not suitable for adults.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | May 22, 2008 2:32 AM

Uh, Moe, did you actually read the essay to which you linked? Orwell quite obviously didn't share Lewis' theological ideas, so naturally he disagreed with much of what the book was trying to say, and about its supernatural elements. In spite of that, he conceded that it was a good book. That review seems pretty favorable to me, hence why I said, 'a favorable, if critical review.'

Like I said, I don't think matters of literary taste can be debated that productively- how do you prove whether one book is better than another? Even if it is possible, I'm not equipped to do it- my training is in the sciences. For example how do you prove whether Blake or Eliot was a better poet?

Personally _as a writer of fiction_ I think Lewis was a good bit better than Orwell. The test of a classic is that it stands the test of time, and that people find meaning in, no? People continue to read all of Lewis' oeuvre, and continue to come back to them and reread them as adults, and find many levels of meaning and inspiration within them. Orwell's two famous works of fiction are read for their value as political satires, not as fiction (personally I don't think they were that good even as satire, but let's leave it at that). The rest of his fiction is pretty well forgotten. Orwell was a pretty good essayist, but Lewis was quite a bit better as a writer of fiction.

Here are some selected excerpts from Haldane's review of 'That Hideous Strength' from a Marxist viewpoint- like I said, 'favorable but critical.'

"The tale is told with very great skill, and the descriptions of celestial landscapes and of human and nonhuman behaviour are often brilliant. I cannot pay Mr. Lewis a higher compliment than to compare him with Dante and Milton..."

"[Mr. Lewis] is intelligent enough to make some very awkward if unconscious admissions. For example, the sinless creatures on Mars had a theology but no religion. They believed in a creator and an after-life, like Benjamin Franklin and other great rationalists; but during a stay of several months among them Mr. Ransom reported no religious ceremonies, or even private prayers. Their converstations with passing angels, or "eldils," whom they occasionally saw and heard, were no more like religious acts than is turning on the radio to listen to Mr. Attlee. This is entirely what one would expect if Mr. Lewis's other premises were true. A person fully adapted to his environment would have no religion. As Marx put it (On Hegels's Philosophy of Law, 1844): "This state, this society, produce religion - an inverted consciousness of the world - because it is an inverted world ... it is the fantastic realisation of man, because man possesses no true realisation.

"I agree with Mr. Lewis that man is in a sense a fallen being. The Origin of the Family seems to me to provide better evidence for this belief than the Book of Genesis. But I disagree with him in that I also believe that man can rise again by his own efforts. Those who hold the contrary view inevitably regard the reform of society as a dangerous dream, and natural science as unworthy of serious study. And they consequently end up by making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. But this friendship, so far from qualifying them for an eternal habitation, may not even secure them a competence in this present world. For Mammon has been cleared off a sixth of our planet's surface, and his realm is contracting in Europe today. It was men, not angels, who cast him out.

Posted by Hector | May 22, 2008 8:26 AM

"Actually, that would be the point. Aslan ISN'T Jesus. The article says:

"By using supposal, Lewis doesn't feel compelled to have a DIRECT 1 to-1 CORRELATION between the experiences of Aslan and the real life of Jesus Christ. In his letter to Sophia Storr, Lewis talks of this freedom: "When I started The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, I don't think I foresaw what Aslan was going to do and suffer. I think He just insisted on behaving in His own way." (CAPS Mine)"

A 1-1 correlation between the experiences of a character and the experiences of the real person, is not a requirement of an allegory. As far as I know, neither Stalin nor Trotsky ever actually spent time in a farmhouse. That doesn't mean that Animal Farm isn't an allegory.

Allegories can be strict, one-to-one readings of concepts - like Animal Farm, Pilgrim's Progress, and Lewis's own Pilgrim's Regress. They can also be less one-to-one, as in Oz. The characters still pretty clearly represent some sort of concept or person, but the match isn't as exact. When you get to the point of the characters having their own motivations for doing something, instead of being plot devices, then it's no longer an allegory. Harry Potter is an example of this. Although Harry shares some Jesus-like qualities, he's not supposed to "be" Jesus. He's supposed to be Harry. There's certainly room to argue over where any particular book would fall on that spectrum, and I'll agree that Narnia is a close call. Not all of the characters are allegorical - who exactly is Lucy supposed to "be?" Or Eustace, or Jill? - but the lion isn't just a lion.

Posted by Tel | May 22, 2008 10:52 AM

"Lewis's (not-so-enduring) 'That Hideous Strength'"

For what it's worth, the Space Trilogy has great admirers even to the present day. I have to admit I have yet to read it myself and therefore cannot comment on its quality.

"'I cannot pay Mr. Lewis a higher compliment than to compare him with Dante and Milton'"

I wonder if Mr. Esper is still reading this thread. (I would never go that far myself.)

Posted by James Kabala | May 22, 2008 1:23 PM

Tel,

Here is a definition of allegory from the following link: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/lit_terms/allegory.html

"Allegory is a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy.
Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning."

I agree with you that Harry Potter in Harry is Harry, in spite of the Christ symbolism associated in the book with his character (a wand made of Holly and Phoneix feather!) but I would also argue that Aslan is Aslan. He is "God" in the context of Narnia. Within the fictional context of Narnia, not Jesus. The tricky thing though is that in Christian theology God and Jesus are both the same being. So by extension, Aslan and Jesus are the same being, but in another way, the context in which they appear and act, they aren't. For me, what makes an allegory is the author's intent. An author uses an extended metaphor of symbolic characters to create a STORY with two meanings -- one literal meaning and one symbolic. Narnia doesn't have this at all. There isn't any symbolic meaning to Narnia -- its a story about itself -- one from which lessons can be drawn and applications made -- as from any story -- but there isn't any underlying scaffolding the thing hangs on. Aslan is Lewis's imagined idea of what God -- not Jesus -- would be like in this imagined world. Other than that, the world itself and the stories don't have any direct correlation to here. In some stories, historical characters appear as themselves or appear in disguise. That doesn't make them allegories. It's only the religious aspect of Aslan and the general association of allegory with Christianity in the lay mind that makes people think Narnia is an allegory. I guess I've flogged the horse dead here. I'm sure plenty of people will disagree! :-) After all, we live in a world just as rich in possibility and as beautiful as Narnia.

Posted by Mike Harris-Stone | May 22, 2008 6:09 PM

"The book ends in a way that is so preposterous that it does not even succeed in being horrible in spite of much bloodshed." Orwell

TR: That sort of fits what little I've read of Lewis too.

This puts me an awkward area in a way. Usually the idea is that Christians are supposed to defend Lewis from the awful atheist minions. I really think that doesn't work in real life. I've seen several atheists who like Lewis and I know several Christians who don't.

Although understandable I don't really see a comparison to Chesterton. Chesterton was eccentric, but in his own odd way his stories/outlook was much more logical. People don't drink beer with beavers when Santa Claus shows up. Nor do scientists necessarily care about Merlin let alone think he exists. He doesn't pretend Medieval notions about outer space are correct, precisely, just that Medieval notions are charming and kind of fun. Chesterton was very into "sharp lines" and even railed against Impressionist paintings. In something like "Napoleon of Notting Hill" a group takes over modern London with Medieval weapons, but you don't get wizards or griffins arising. (Or maybe I'm reacting this way because, based on what I've read, I like Chesterton a heck of a lot more)

I guess a difference being he came to Catholicism from Unitarianism/Pantheism. Lewis came to Christianity, essentially, from a kind of Humanistic Paganism. Also Chesterton, in a real sense, came much closer to something like insanity in his lifetime. People who've been through actual madness might value saneness a bit more and also be a bit more entertaining.

Posted by Thomas R | May 23, 2008 2:45 AM

the makers of Prince Caspian kept to the original story in some ways and strayed in others... i heard they were going to make it into a silly pure-action flick, but thankfully this was not the case

Posted by patrick | June 3, 2008 6:18 PM