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The Narnia Code by Michael Ward

Jan9

Subtitle: C.S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens.
Clive Staples Lewis was an awesomely talented, gifted, subtle, and boisterous genius!

Douglas Gresham on Lewis’s genius:

“He was a complete genius. He also was a very fast reader, but he had honed the talent and perfected the strange memory that resulted in never forgetting anything he had read. Now he could, he could ask you to pick any book off of his shelves, and you would pick a page and read him a line and he would quote the rest of the page; in fact, quote the rest of the book until you told him to stop. He had this enormous capacity to remember everything he’d ever read.”

In The Narnia Code by Michael Ward, Dr. Ward, who is also a minister in the Church of England, demonstrates Lewis’s genius by showing how all seven of the Narnia chronicles are linked together by a single unifying motif or plan. Ward’s thesis is that each of the seven Chronicles of Narnia takes as its central underlying imagery and atmosphere one of the seven “planets” of the medieval, classical astrological world. These “planets” are not the eight or nine that we moderns know and memorize but rather the medievals believed that the seven heavenly bodies, each with its own influences and associated imagery, were the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Each of these planets is featured in a particular Narnia book in a sort of “code” of symbols and images that Lewis never spelled out for anyone but about which he left clues both in the Chronicles of Narnia themselves and in his other writings.

I found Dr. Ward’s reasoning compelling and fascinating. The Narnia Code is a popular abridgement of a longer, more scholarly dissertation on these ideas, a book called Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis. Despite the somewhat misleading title, The Narnia Code is no DaVinci Code knock-off, associating C.S. Lewis and his Narnia books with some hokey new age interpretation and bad theology. Instead, I found in The Narnia Code a new appreciation for C.S. Lewis’s genius and for his heartfelt desire to communicate the truth of the gospel in a way that would enter deep into the imaginations and souls of both children and adults. No, C.S. Lewis didn’t believe in astrology, the telling of fortunes and of the future by means of the stars. However, Lewis did believe that the ancient mythologies and symbols and worldviews contained God’s truth and had ways of speaking to us that would break through and shake up our modern paradigms.

Psalm 19
The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

In Reflections on the Psalms, C.S. Lewis said of Psalm 19, it is “the greatest psalm in the psalter and one of the greatest lyrics in the world.” In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis apparently left traces of his love for God’s handiwork in the stars and planets and of his delight in the medieval cosmology and the mythology associated with the heavenly bodies. My next reading of The Chronicles of Narnia will be richer because of the ideas and explanations that I read about in The Narnia Code. If you are a Narnia lover, I highly recommend either Planet Narnia or The Narnia Code as an introduction to the use of cosmological symbology in the Narnia books.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader: The Movie

Jan4

We just went to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, finally. It was a good movie. We saw it in 3-D, the first movie I’ve seen that way, and the action really does jump out at you and make you feel more involved. There was lots of good action, thrills and chills, and the dragon was well done and believable. There was a character named Eustace who was supposed to be annoying and somewhat comical at the same time, and the actor who played him was great. The actress who played Lucy also did a good job of playing a confused young teenage girl, and Edmund and Caspian were O.K. as rivals/friends, if somewhat wooden at times. My theory is that the Edmund and Caspian characters couldn’t figure out whether they were supposed to be best buddies or contenders for the same throne, so they got mixed up sometimes. The plot moved along at a good pace, and there were a few lines that elicited a chuckle from me and from my girls.

Unfortunately, almost the entire movie, including the characters’ names, the title, and parts of the plot, was plagiarized from a book by an Oxford don named C.S. Lewis. The book was published about fifty years ago, and the screenplay writers obviously borrowed freely from Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In fact, the best parts of the movie came straight from Lewis’s book, and the worst parts–evil green mist, magical vibrating swords, a totally out of place stowaway–were invented by whomever it was that wrote this brand new story ripped from the pages of C.S. Lewis’s classic novel.

Z-baby and I are in the process of reading The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis now, and although I hope it and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader are made into movies someday, I do hope that the people who made the movie we saw tonight don’t get hold of The Silver Chair. The silver chair would become a magic golden throne in a cave of green serpents with Eustace and Jill fighting duels with one another instead of arguing about the signs. Then, Aslan would appear and tell them to just believe in themselves and all would be magically resolved. Prince Rilian might get a bit part, and Puddleglum would be a complete clown.

If you haven’t seen The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, just re-name this movie in your head: call it Edmund and the Sea Serpent or something of the sort and enjoy it for what it is. Then, read or re-read all of the Narnia Chronicles and enjoy them for the wonderful, meaningful stories that they are.

Narnia Aslant: A Narnia-Inspired Reading List

Jun23

In the fifty some odd years since C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia were published, other authors have been inspired by, or provoked by, Lewis’s imaginary land and characters. If you like the Chronicles of Narnia, especially if you’re a die-hard fan, you may enjoy these related books:

Young Adult Fiction:

Here There Be Dragons by James Owen. Owen’s Imaginarium Geographica and the lands it maps are clearly inspired by Lewis’s Narnia as well as other fantasy and science fiction classics.
Nymeth’s review of Here There Be Dragons. I’m pretty much in agreement with her: great literature it’s not, but it is a lot of fun.
Semicolon review here. The sequels are The Search for the Red Dragon and The Indigo King. I just finished reading The Indigo King, and as with the other two it was a lot of fun, mostly because of all the sic-fi and fantasy allusions and in this third book also because of the time travel element which reminded me somewhat of LOST. (Of course, everything reminds me of LOST.)

A Door Near Here by Heather Quarles is quite a different kettle of fish, although it has a Narnia slant, too. It’s young adult contemporary fiction about a family of children dealing with the alcoholism of their mom. One way the youngest child copes is by writing letters to C.S. Lewis and believing that she can go to Narnia if she can just find the right door.
Semicolon review here.

In Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson, Leslie is a fan of the Narnia books, and the children name their secret place Terebithia, which Ms. Paterson says was not consciously a corruption of Terebinthia, an island in Narnia. It sure sounds awfully close to me, though, and the author admits that she probably got her secret kingdom’s name from Lewis, although sub-consciously.

Adult fiction:
Neil Gaiman wrote a 2004 short story called The Problem of Susan in which we get to meet a grown-up, left behind, Susan Pevensie. I suspect I won’t like the story very much, because I don’t like short stories in general and I never did understand what the problem was with Lewis’s having Susan refuse to return to Narnia. She “outgrew” Narnia, so Narnia was closed to her. I’m going to read it, though, just to see what Gaiman’s take is on the whole “Susan problem.”

Nonfiction Narnia-lore:

The Narnia Cookbook by Douglas Gresham. Illustrated by Pauline Baynes. HarperCollins, 1998. I haven’t actually seen this book, but doesn’t it sound like fun. Who wouldn’t want to learn how to make Turkish Delight, even though I hear it’s not nearly as good as it’s cracked up to be?

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Michael Ward. I’m definitely going to read this book as a part of Carrie’s Narnia Challenge. You can read more about the book here and here.

Any other suggestions for Narnia-inspired fiction or nonfiction?

Narnia, Here We Come

Jun19

Dawn Treader
Carrie at Reading to Know is sponsoring a Chronicles of Narnia Reading CHallenge. I don’t know exactly what I’ll do to participate in the challenge, but I must do something!

Narnia and Middle Earth are my favorite places in children’s literature. My children and I have read the books, listened to them on CD, read them aloud, and watched the movies, both the BBC series and the newer big screen movies. We are immersed in and longing for Narnia and what it symbolizes. (The art print is called Dawn Treader by artist John Ruseau.)

So I can’t resist the challenge, but to find something Narnian that we haven’t already explored will be a challenge. Stay tuned for what promises to be a fun Narnian adventure in the next month or so.