A hermeneutical understanding of The Chronicles of Narnia
By Anna Blanch
The Chronicles of Narnia sees an apparent collision between Lewis's Christian worldview, his Platonism and his utilisation of pagan mythology. Understanding and analysing the coherence of these apparently disparate tracks of theoretical thought is integral to applying a heuristic approach in which Lewis's critical assumptions are foremost and enables construction of the approach that he intended the reader to take in relation to their reading of the series.
Lewis has created, in Narnia, an intrinsically mythical world that employs aspects and elements of various cultures and traditions, relating to their history, deities, ancestors and heroes, including biblical literature, Celtic, Roman, Greek and Norse mythology. Lewis's contention that allegorical interpretation was an important aspect of the Christian world's appropriation of the art of the ancient pagan world is important in his fusion of pagan mythology and biblical literature. The evolution of his definition of myth can be found in the influence mythology had on him and his work, both early in his life and in his academic career. Lewis's definition closely intertwined his interest in mythologies with his Christian faith.1 Lewis admitted that during the height of his interest in Norse mythology, around 1919, he believed in Norse myths as “truth”.2 Consequently, Lewis began early to combine genres and mythologies in his work. Lewis described Dymer (1926) as an attempt to complete a tragedy “Norse in subject and Greek in Form”.3 Lewis was particularly taken by the work of George Macdonald who was himself inspired by Norse sagas and eddas, and intentionally infused both mythology and his Christian worldview into his fictional work.4 Lewis began to explore other worlds in his own work, beginning with the creation in his childhood of an animal land, titled Boxen, and progressing to the books of his Space Trilogy, Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength, in which planets, and thus worlds, are juxtaposed with earth and “primary world” reality. Essentially, myth awakened in Lewis a “longing for other worlds”, and it is for this reason that he perceived great value in the ability of plays and novels to articulate “the great myths”.5
Lewis believed that “what might be myth in one world might be fact in another” and that all mythology, religions and pagan ritual have their essence in the one “true myth”, which he understood to be the Christian understanding of God and his incarnate son, Jesus Christ.6 Thus it could be said that Christianity is a myth like any other, excepting that, unlike other myths, it has the quality of a “true myth”.7 This concept of a “true myth” came from his discussions with Tolkien, but for both, this assertion is a direct response to the anthropological classic, The Golden Bough, and its authoritative author, J.G Frazer. In asserting the interrelated fabric of all myth, Lewis was concurring with Frazer's beliefs. The similarities however, end there. Frazer argued that none of the myths was more “true” than any other (a precursor to religious pluralism).8 By positing that in essence there is truth and that pagan rituals have an essence of the one true myth, which is the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in our world at least, Lewis was placing himself in conflict with the dominant anthropological and sociological canon.
Lewis's definition is integral to developing and applying a heuristic framework in order to interpret his “other world” subcreation and his symbolic use of typology. The interaction between the mythological influences on Lewis and his personal conversion to Christianity changed the level of prominence he gave to Christian “myth” and consequently to his creative exercise. Lewis believed in the inherent correlation of myth and fact, and similarly saw all pre-Christian myths as shadows of the Christian “truth”. It is for this philosophical reason that he used so much “primary world” mythology, both classical and pagan, in The Chronicles, rather than creating a whole new mythology and language, as did his friend and colleague Tolkien.9 Lewis drew upon diverse mythological sources to construct a world in which “permanent and inevitable” truth may be explored. Lewis's alternative description of the series as a “supposal” as opposed to an allegory strongly supports the proposal that Lewis intended the series not to be decoded like an allegory.
Hooper explains that by “allegory” Lewis meant the use of something real and tangible to stand for that which is real but intangible.10 It is on the basis of the images' reality in the context of another world that this becomes supposal, not allegory. Lewis's alternate definition, in which allegory acts as a way to reveal, not to hide, and symbolism acts as a way to see the archetype through the type, led him to deny the label partly because of the modern tendency for “one for one” equivalence, and because supposal instead employs symbolism. He also held that the allegorists firmly believed in their ability to illuminate the immaterial, that the allegorical “copy” transmits some of its features in transforming the immaterial. This is contrary to the spirit of what Lewis intended through the use of mythological and biblical sources. A supposition bears essential features of the original material thing with details unique to the situation, and, most essentially, it is not designed to alter, transform, or illuminate the original. Instead, Lewis presents a type of the original, and in doing so admits that it cannot and does not compare in depth or quality to the original; rather its very inability points to the “truth“ of the original.
The key to supposal lies, as Lewis saw it, in the factual tangibility of the incarnate Christ. It can be shown from Lewis's correspondence that he did intend Aslan to be a type of Jesus, and that Aslan be recognised as such. Lewis clearly stated, however, that Aslan wasn't Jesus, allegorically, but what Jesus might have been like if there was another world and he had chosen to use the form of a lion. Intrinsically, Lewis is portraying the truth, as he sees it, of the Christian myth. While The Chronicles are saturated with images that are types of aspects and characters present in the Bible, his purpose was not a promotion of pluralism or intellectualism.11
In the very nature of supposal, Lewis is clearly engaged in creating similitudes between this world, the next and other worlds. Lewis fundamentally disagreed with the critical notion of the allegory offering more than the object being described, which is one reason he gives for why allegorical language is used in preference to literal language. Especially when dealing with matters as “weighty” as the Christian gospel, Lewis would reasonably and naturally deny any label that suggested any significant intervention in his part that was beyond mere shadow and reflection. This is not, however, the most significant obstacle for Lewis:
Allegory, after all, is simile seen from the other end; and when we have seen the point of simile we do not throw it away ... to read an allegory as a continued simile, but a simile which works backward ...12
Herein lies the rub, for, as I will argue, The Chronicles of Narnia are not to be read backwards—that is, I would contend, through a lens of biblical Scripture, but forwards, being recognised as a shadow of the real, in Platonic terms, preparing the reader for what may later be encountered in a revelation of the Christian salvation narrative. The practical application of Lewis's definition of myth can most strikingly be seen in an analysis of images that have a basis in both biblical literature and pagan mythology. I will now turn to a brief examination of a number of these images.
Creation
Creation is an important theme in The Chronicles,13 and a type of biblical creation is represented in The Magician's Nephew as Narnia is created verbally ex nihilo by a pre-existent creator. Out of nothing, light, sun, heavenly bodies, the forms of the earth and all within it are created by Aslan, the son of the Emperor across the Sea.
The Narnian creation narrative parallels the narrative emphasis on speech (in and of the creator) in Genesis 1 and John 1, which includes the reality of speech determining action. That is to say, creation occurs out of speech.14 This is refigured in The Magician's Nephew where creation is spoken and sung15 in a parallel narrative with Genesis, and in terms of form and intent with the first chapter of the gospel of John. John 1 is focused on positing the connection between the members of the Trinity, Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit, and the role of the King and saviour as creator. Aslan, as a type of the creator, sings a world into creation, and this can be paralleled with the “word of God“ speaking the world into creation as expressed in John 1:1-3.16
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
In contrast, Genesis 1 itself is significantly concerned in structure and themes with Babylonian mythology, and particularly with using similar narrative forms to persuasively highlight a single omniscient and omnipotent God, as opposed to a pantheistic world.17 In The Magician's Nephew, the stars and the sun (which signifies the health and age of the world, both in Charn and in Narnia) are created by Aslan.18 “Stars” as indicators of “seasons” and appointed times are not merely a phenomenon of pagan astrology but they are also biblically endorsed in Genesis 1:14. “God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.’” In the same way, Genesis 1:16-18 sees God fashion the sun. The sun and the stars are highlighted as a creation of God to prevent and rebut mythologies that are centred upon a Sun deity or other heavenly bodies. The point is also made in The Magician's Nephew when the narrator describes Digory's sensations: “They [the sun and earth] made you feel excited; until you saw the singer himself, and then you forgot everything else”.19
The creation narrative in The Chronicles of Narnia does not confine itself to biblical literature, as Lewis specifically highlights connections between the Narnian creation story and other mythologies, while at the same time distancing this world from those mythologies. This is illustrated in The Magician's Nephew when Uncle Andrew shows Digory a box from Atlantis, a world like Narnia, accessible from the “Wood between the worlds”. This world, and consequently Narnia, is defined by what it is not: “... it wasn't Greek, or Old Egyptian, or Babylonian, or Hittite, or Chinese”.20 In itself, this framing statement is a juxtaposition of mythology, evolution theory and biblical history.
The creatures of Narnia have diverse and rich origins in the mythology of different civilisations: the Roman Bacchus and Pomona; the Greek fauns, satyrs and centaurs, Dryads and hamadryads (good tree spirits who populate the forests of Narnia); Naiads and other River “gods”; along with Minotaurs who act as soldiers in the White Witch's army. Beyond these, there are other types of mythological creatures from various cultures, including wraiths, hags and ogres. Unlike the biblical account, this creation narrative is without the explicit creation of man as “Son of Adam”.21 Digory is already present during the creation process, and so creation finds its culmination in the “creation” of talking beasts who are created from the earth, literally arising from it.
Can you imagine a stretch of grassy land bubbling like water in a pot? ... In all directions it was swelling into humps. They were of very different sizes, some no bigger than mole-hills, some as big as wheel-barrows, two the size of cottages. And the humps moved and swelled till they burst, and the crumbled earth poured out of them, and from each hump there came out an animal.22
From these, Aslan selected two animals at a time from each type by touching noses with them, though some sorts of animals he passed over altogether.23 These creatures, the chosen ones, were imbued with speech and were changed—some being made slightly larger if they were small (like moles and rabbits) and some being made smaller if they were very large (like the elephants).24 Significantly, breath (symbolic of spirit in biblical terms25) and a bolt of fire (often symbolic of cleansing and holiness) are used as a means of anointing during this ceremony (which carries with it some resonance of Pentecost) in order to instill certain characteristics such as speech and free will:
The Lion opened his mouth, but no sound came from it; he was breathing out, a long, warm breath ... Then came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself ... and in the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.”26
The fusion of divergent imagery and motifs is an example of how the creatures are not intended to allegorically represent biblical creation; rather, they operate as a type of the creation. The selection of a pair of each type recalls Genesis 6:18-7:24 and the selection of pairs to enter Noah's ark.27
The Lion
As lion, saviour, creator and judge of the created, Aslan has clear foundations in mythology and biblical literature. The lion as a motif has been characterised as King of the Jungle, King of Beasts and, in Frazer, as Lord of the Wood.28 In Pagan mythology, the lion is a pastoral motif indicative of power. For example, since Ovid, the Lion as King of Beasts has been prominent as an embodiment of power and uncontrollable strength.29 As all of these, and additionally as the Son of the Emperor beyond the sea,30 the motif of the lion is incarnate in the figure of Aslan.
There appears to be a clear synergy between mediaeval and biblical images of the “lion”. For example, the Royal Lion Hunt was common in the early iconography of Western Asia, and often symbolised death and resurrection; continuation of life was ensured by the killing of the godlike animal.31 The King's own divinity was often suggested by his fearless grasp of the animal's paws—an archetypal image of human courage matching lion courage.32 This image of characters touching their hands with Aslan's paws, as when Aslan greets Bree and Hwin for the first time in The Horse and His Boy, or when Aslan wipes away the tears of Digory in The Magician's Nephew and those of Lucy at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, reflect this conception.33
It is clear that Aslan is supposed to be compared with, and considered in the light of, Jesus. Specifically, Aslan is a typological representation of Jesus, while simultaneously within Narnia, Aslan is himself an antitype. He is a type as King David is a type, of the antitype, Jesus Christ.34 Biblically, Jesus is often referred to as the Lion of Judah,35 while similarly, “lion of Judah” is a synonym for Jesus Christ found in medieval texts. In the Physiologus and other medieval bestiaries, the lion is made a symbol of Christ's role as redeemer and victor over Satan, who is also sometimes described as “a roaring lion”36. Lindskoog has also written about these parallels in great detail.37 Lewis explicitly links Aslan with the Lion of Judah in a letter written in 1954 where he tells a child that the great lion Aslan is the “Lion of Judah”.38 The figure of the Christ is described as the Lion of Judah, (also a synonym for the “King of Judah”) in the Old Testament,39 while the “Lion of the tribe of Judah” is said, in Revelation 5:5, to have conquered all.40
Evil and Instruments of Deception
Figures and instruments of evil are in constant opposition to (though they are never able to defeat) the “deeper magic” and thus Aslan. Each evil character finds some foundation or basis in pagan mythology: Jadis, the White Witch, the Lady of the Green Kirtle, Tarkaan, Shift and Tash. I will explore the examples of Jadis and Shift.
In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch (later seen in her first incarnation as Jadis in The Magician's Nephew) personifies qualities of fear, cowardice, surrender, coldness, blankness and the pallor of death. Jadis resonates with “Jade” and consequently the colour green. In pagan mythology, green was linked with female deities, and a pale greenish tinge with death. In English idiomatic usage, green can describe immaturity while also evoking the hues of envy and jealousy. Aspects of Jadis and the White Witch are often associated with biblical and pagan symbols of evil. For example, Satan himself is sometimes represented as green, and similarly the horned minotaur, who is a servant of the White Witch in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is a Greek mythical image that has been partly borrowed by the Christian tradition to depict Satan.41
Jadis is described in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as the daughter of Lilith, the first wife of Adam. Though she is nowhere named in the Bible, this pagan legend dates from the Dark Ages.42 In Babylonian legend, Lilith was a “demon of desolate places”, and in later Jewish law, she is believed to have deserted Adam and haunted the night. Jadis's power in her own world seems to be based on mental energies, but in Narnia, magic (at least, black magic) seems to be based on elements. Jadis uses a wand and some sort of a magical substance that can be transfigured. Magic has existed from the creation of the world, and it is connected intimately with kingship and the power to rule. Lewis distinguishes clearly between the use of magic for evil and the intrinsic “deeper magic” of the good creator.
Shift is the anti-Christ figure in The Last Battle. Placing Shift in a stable recalls 2 Thessalonians 2:4 where it is prophesied that world rulers will set themselves up in the temple of God, the stable being the birthplace of Jesus. Shift, like the antichrist, is a powerful leader who subdues the world's rulers, persecutes the faithful, and performs “signs and lying wonders”,43 like Mark 13:22: “False Christs and false prophets will arise and perform signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect”.
The ape is an image of sharply diverging symbolism, respected in ancient Egypt, Africa, India and China, but deeply distrusted in Christian tradition where it was equated with vice, lust, idolatry and devilish heresies. Similarly, “an ass in a lion's skin”, which is the picture of the donkey “Puzzle” in The Last Battle, is a folkloric aphorism for a coward—a fool that “apes” the wise man. The ass that put on a lion's hide was betrayed when he began to bray.
Implication of use of pagan mythology and biblical literature
Lewis's use of images with a basis in both biblical literature and pagan mythology demonstrates his method of symbolic typological construction. Lewis's methodology of type is integral to his practical application of authorship in the context of how Lewis intended the text to be read. An interpretation of Lewis's methodology limited to allegorical representation or “illumination” undermines Lewis's intended approach to reading the The Chronicles of Narnia. But his intended approach may have broader implications for understanding Lewis's theology and ideological framework.
I will now address the hermeneutical foundations underlying Lewis's image construction and how this impacts his intended approach to reading The Chronicles of Narnia.
Lewis held firmly to a Christian worldview.44 Lewis wrote The Chronicles within this framework, and in the context of Lewis's Platonic thought, Narnia provides the expressive medium for his understanding of biblical literature and mythology, expressed through his use of typology employed as a narrative technique. Lewis was intent on the result of this subcreation functioning as a “baptism of the imagination”. This concept of “baptising” is about preparing the reader for later explicit transmission of the Christian gospel. In The Discarded Image, Lewis specifically stresses the continuity of pagan and Christian thought, and proposes that pagans and early Christians have far more in common than either share with modernity. This assumption is evident in the manner in which Lewis fuses pagan and biblical imagery in The Chronicles.45 However, The Chronicles is not the first series where Lewis endeavoured to fuse myth with biblical imagery; indeed, Moorman (1966) argues that it was Lewis's main aim in the Space Trilogy to create and maintain a “metaphor that will serve to carry in fictional form the basic tenets of Christianity and present them from a non-christian point of view, but without reference to normal Christian symbols”.46 In The Chronicles, Lewis refigures Neoplatonist motifs and interpretational notions of meaning, originally neither Christian nor anti-Christian, for obliquely apologetic purposes.47
Lewis did not necessarily think that the moral part of literature had to be foremost. If an entertaining work also had the quality of being didactic, this was not negative per se; rather, Lewis felt that if a writer wrote what interested him, and if that person was a moral person, then morality would naturally flow through the book.48 Hinton elaborated by arguing that,
Lewis always insisted that he did not decide to write an overtly Christian or ... moral ... work and then come up with a story; rather Lewis had pictures in his mind that he formed into a story and the Christianity found its way in because of who he was as a person.49
The concept that there is “smuggled theology” in The Chronicles has been an area of significant controversy. Indeed, a thematic strategy to present Lewis's sense of truth and morality has been considered ingenious by some, like Downing, Green and Hooper, while being dismissed as simple and crude by others, like J.B.S. Haldane.50
In Downing's evaluation,
one may argue about Lewis's odd mixture of narration and exposition or decry his tendency to reduce complex philosophical and sociological issues to a battle of light and darkness. But in the end one cannot help but admit the resourcefulness and conviction with which Lewis weaves his worldview into the fabric of his fiction.51
The narration that Downing refers to—Lewis's overt authorial commentary—has been itself criticised for its moralising tone.52 Indeed, Como describes Lewis as “relentlessly persuasive” and argues that all Lewis's work, fiction or non-fiction, is focused on apologetics—whether specifically veiled or not.53 From Lewis's own statements, this seems fair. Additionally, Hooper argues that Lewis wished to conquer for his own what had “hitherto been used for the opposite side”.54 Lewis wrote,
I think that this great ignorance might be a help to the evangelisation of England; any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people's minds under a cover of romance without them knowing it.55
Tolkien was an open critic of this practice, believing that the diversity of mythological sources was an irrecoverable flaw in Lewis's work. Indeed, George Sayer describes Tolkien observing that “the book was worthless, that it seemed like a jumble of unrelated mythologies”.56 Tolkien intensely disliked the series because it was “too allegorical, too consciously concerned with communicating the truth—claims of Christianity”.57 Moreover, Holbrook, for example, condemns Lewis for his “intense self-righteousness”, and refuses to acknowledge that the series could be reasonably accepted as a Christian fable due to what he describes as its forfeiture of autonomy and presence of dehumanizing sadism.58
Lewis, however, firmly believed that pagan myth served as an effective preparation for the gospel.59 Lewis employed mythological and biblical literature (and even traditional faerie tales) in order to desensitise a secular modern world to the spiritual realm. Wolfe contends that Lewis possessed an ability “to breathe new life into ancient myths and religious dogmas by taking their symbolic patterns and placing them in a different context”.60 Lewis was not as concerned about originality as one might perceive the creator of an other world to be; indeed, he was concerned with minimising his own injection of originality by seeking to use the materials provided as they were.61
Narnia is a shadow of the true or real Narnia. In the same way, the biblical ideas in Narnia are mere shadows of Scripture itself, and consequently of the creator-God. For Lewis, our world is a mere shadow of the spiritual realm. In order to describe what is seen in the real creation, Lewis does not seek to be “original” in his creation of a secondary world. Lewis's Platonism also enabled him to reconcile the notions of other worlds, layers of meaning and transcendental concepts of space, time and natural law (known in Narnia as the “deeper magic”).
Lewis believed in a transcendent moral law that exists in the fabric of the world and has done so from its foundations (Lewis referred to this as the Tao62). A universal moral law equates to a universal law giver in Lewis's understanding. Lewis was a Platonist in so far as he believed that the primary world is a shadow of another which exists simultaneously. This means that the primary world is a series of shadows and reflections of the real world, the spiritual.63 Lewis believed that the worlds were seamlessly linked.64 This is illustrated in The Last Battle when Professor Kirke tries to explain the difference between the real Narnia and the copy that has passed away but laments at the lack of knowledge of Plato amongst the children. This is, as Hooper points out, a reference to Plato's Republic and Phaedo where he wrote of the “immortality and unchanging reality of changing forms”.65 While Lewis confirms different universal levels to be inherent in Platonism, this is not representing a distant platonic God. Nor does Lewis ever separate the spiritual from the material—that is, he is a Christian Platonist, not a Platonic Christian.
While Platonic thought has been linked with symbolism, it has also been linked with typology.66 This is because, for Lewis, metaphor does not create new insights, but rather reveals what has been present all along. Smith argues that metaphor functions, in Lewis's opinion, in terms of resemblance rather than representation—“showing how things may be like another, without actually being identical”.67 He goes on to explain that “a thing can resemble another thing only if it is not that thing, and only if the difference between the two is apparent”.68 In the same way, there are levels of perception a reader has about the meaning of different images, degrees of verisimilitude as it were. Like Dante, Lewis considered the universe as a mirror;69 Dante thought it was a mirror of God while Lewis saw the image as a “shadow,”, rather than a reflection, and heaven as casting the shadow rather than the universe.
Lewis's concept of magic, as opposed to “deeper magic”, is a reflection of his Platonist philosophy. Lewis believed that everything in this world is a reflection of a greater, better and more real existence which God has waiting for us. He believed that, in eternity, we will keep discovering deeper, more direct levels of God's greatness. The Last Battle is a direct exploration of this belief. Thus, the concept of “deeper magic” in Lewis's philosophical and theological framework centres around the concept that the laws we know in this “primary world” are a reflection of greater, deeper, closer-to-the-source laws. Consequently, in accordance with Lewis's theology and his Platonist philosophy, Jesus' resurrection was possible because of a greater law by which death could not conquer him, just as Aslan was resurrected in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by the “deeper magic” instituted in Narnia before the beginning of time (as seen in The Magician's Nephew).
Lewis's assertion that The Chronicles of Narnia is a supposal has also been linked with his Platonism.70 It is certainly the case that the “as if” component of Lewis's secondary world depends on the willingness of the reader to entertain the concept of a visible and invisible world that are seamlessly connected. The concept of “further up and further in”—that is, the revelation of the extent of the Narnian world—is prefigured in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where the He-Beaver invites the children “further in” to the forest and parts of Narnia that they have not yet seen. Consequently, the end of the Narnian world is a fulfilment of the prefiguring of the end of the world (as in The Magician's Nephew), the full revelation of the true Narnia, and the final fulfilment of the “deeper magic” (though death and evil had already been defeated in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with Aslan's death). It is also a re-enactment of the biblical covenant in Genesis 9:8-17 where creation is shown to be part of the “deeper covenant” between God and mankind.71 There is an implication then that Lewis's typology, in as much as it is inherently metaphorical, makes possible a comprehension of aspects of both immaterial and specifically spiritual aspects of reality.72
Reversal of the Hermeneutical flow
Hermeneutics is the art of understanding and interpreting discourse through systematic procedures.73 Standard hermeneutical theory holds that the reader should always try to read the text in the terms the author believed in. It seems plausible in light of Lewis's worldview that interpretation of The Chronicles have generally been carried out in accordance with biblical hermeneutics in which the Bible operates as the mediator or lens.
Figure 1:
Lewis was hesitant to allow the label of allegory, not just because of all the reasons given in of this essay, but because he disagreed with the critical approach of those who seek to interpret allegory as if translation of each minute part is necessary.74 Lewis argued that this method
leads you continually out of the book and back to the conception that you started from and would have had without reading it. The right process is the exact reverse ... moving always into the book, not out of it, from the concept to the image, enriches the concept. And that is what allegory is for.75
Lewis really hoped to do more than create a world in which simple conceptual equivalences were made by his readers. Two other aspects of this are significant. Firstly, Lewis advocated a reversal of the commonly held interpretative process. This is, then, his intended approach to the reading of The Chronicles. And secondly, Lewis held that the purpose of allegory is to enrich a concept by moving “further up and further in”. This too is how Lewis intended The Chronicles to be viewed, but not so that conflicts result between this view of the series where Narnia functions as a reflection of the true Narnia (heaven), and the Christian gospel.
Reversing the standard hermeneutical flow is not a new concept. In the context of examining pop culture and film, Detweiler and Taylor explore what film says about the Bible and God, thus “reading the bible through a grid of pop culture”.76 In the same way, The Chronicles can function as the grid through which an examination of what it has to say about the Bible and God can be conducted.
Figure 2:
Figure 3:
The idea is that the reader moves from The Chronicles and Narnia to the real—the real in terms of God, the Scriptures, and the relationship between the primary world and God. An example of how the reversal of the standard approach impacts on the interpretation of the text can be seen by examining the scene where Eustace's redemption and transformation from the physical form of a dragon back into the form of a boy in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader takes place.77 If the standard approach (in which one considers the passage through a lens of biblical Scripture) is taken, then one could conclude that Lewis is arguing for the necessity of physical baptism as intrinsic to personal salvation. This doctrinal stance is controversial in itself, and leads to assumptions about Lewis's own theology. The reader may also be led to search for specific parallels, and he or she will be hard-pressed to find appropriate material, though he or she may settle on the healing of the blind man by the pool in John 5:1-9.
On the other hand, in the light of a reverse approach, the passage may lead one to conclude that it provides a sensation of what redemption is, as opposed to being a definitive manifestation. It may lead one to the recognition of the concept that one cannot transform oneself, which is part of the “baptising of the imagination“. It may lead one later to comprehend the notion of being transformed and born again spiritually. Or, finally, it may lead one to Icelandic folklore in which unfortunate people are transformed into dragons as they sleep.
T.A. Shippey's analysis provides an example of a critic analysing The Chronicles using a standard hermeneutical approach.78 Shippey considers that Christian doctrine is apparent in the narrative, and that textual parallels with the crucifixion are “obvious”. He particularly emphasises the analogy between the death and taunting of Aslan (which recalls Jesus' death); the scene of Aslan's despair (recalling the Garden of Gethsemane); the role of Lucy and Susan (being like the two Marys at the Cross in their anointing of the dead); and finally the breaking of the Stone Table as a sign of Aslan's resurrection (recalling the rolling of the stone from Christ's tomb). This is a perfect example of where one can reach conclusions which seem feasible but which are based on incorrect assumptions. In reversing the hermeneutical approach, we can give Shippey the first of his parallels but the rest are perhaps unwarranted (or at least questionable). The most strikingly incorrect of his parallels is the last, and a typological analysis shows this to be so. The breaking of the stone table—inscribed with the law and the deep magic of Narnia—to signal the fulfilment of the law and the resurrection of Aslan does function as a biblical type. But it is not a type of the stone rolled away to reveal an empty tomb; rather, it is a re-enactment of the tearing of the temple curtain from top to bottom. This curtain had separated all from the ark of the covenant—the law—and its tearing (or splitting) in two symbolised the fulfilment of the law and the function of the resurrected Christ as the great high priest and mediator between God and his people. The stone performs no such function.
Establishing that The Chronicles of Narnia is a typological work rather than an allegorical work changes the focus. It becomes less about illumination and more about description. Similarly, a typological construction fits more neatly into the author's stated purpose of the “baptism of the imagination” as it is less explicit and unequivocal and does not contradict the broader description of the work as supposal. For example, Barfield reports that Lewis, in trying to explain why he was so obsessive about discussing Barfield's philosophical opinions and the “animosity” he harboured with regard to them, told him,
a story about a man born blind, who recovered his sight by an operation. The result was disastrous for the protagonist, because he insisted on trying to see the mysterious thing he had heard people calling “light”; whereas you do not see light itself, but only the object it illuminated.79
While Barfield affirms that light is in essence the conveyance—the “by”—it is not visible or able to be conceived in and of itself. That is to say, “Light is what you see by; it is not anything you see, or ever can or will see it”.80 Thus he saw in John 1, “the word is light”, an almost incontrovertible contradiction:
this dilemma—of the light being in the world and the world “knowing” it not, because it is within it—had become the very thing which the Baptist pointed to, and to the overcoming of it, the very thing which Christ was born and died to bring about.81
I wish to make one further point to frame the context, and to contrast Lewis with Barfield. Barfield quotes from a letter Lewis wrote late in his life which said, “Barfield cannot talk on any subject without illuminating it”.82 In the context of Barfield's Anthroposophism, Lewis's evangelical faith, and their sustained disputative relationship, the latter quote was not a compliment. Rather, it can be implied that Lewis was contending that Barfield tried to be the light, the agent of the illumination—that which makes visible.83 On the other hand, Lewis was consumed with trying to describe what is illuminated—that is, what can now be seen by, or because of, the “light”. As in all worlds, including Narnia, the “light” is the agent by which we can understand the world; Aslan is the “light”. For Lewis, in our primary world, the “light” is Christ; that which he illuminates is the fundamental truths of the Christian salvation narrative, and consequently God and our relationship with him:
Again Jesus spoke to them saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”84
That same passage goes on to say that the only way we know the Father is through the Son. Lewis, similarly, is not trying to be the agent, by his subcreation of Narnia and Aslan, or the “light” of our world, the “primary world” (as he argues that Barfield attempts to be). But rather he is seeking to describe through subcreation—the artistic expression of image-making—what the “light” of the primary world might be conceived to be like in a secondary world.85 Lewis describes that which is “illuminated” on the presumption that secondary world-making, especially in typological terms, will not confer additional characteristics or create “light”.
In a similar way, Lewis's intended approach to reading the Chronicles of Narnia comes about as a result of his Christian worldview. Lewis intended that The Chronicles not be read with Scripture as a lens—that is, as an allegory, read backwards, searching always for its “hidden” meaning—but that they should operate as an incitement, or “a seed” for the reader to go on to seek the real, the antitypes, presented in the series. The greatest of these antitypes, “the real”, are heaven, Jesus and God.
Lewis also saw the real as the biblical Scriptures themselves (from which he constructed parallels and episodic allegories) and the mythological source material (whether it be the classic or pagan myths themselves, or the classic works of literature, like Homer's Odyssey and Dante's Divine Comedy).
Conclusion
Lewis's images have a basis in both Christian biblical and classical mythological sources. Additionally, they also draw upon Platonic and “ordinary moral” sources. Therefore, there is a deeper level, reflected by these images constructed from divergent source material. This deeper level is what his images and his work are pointing the reader towards, and what Lewis consciously intends for the reader to see. Thus Lewis's intertwining of Platonic thought, Christian worldview and his didactic infusion of morality are evidence of his intended hermeneutical approach. These form a framework by which the means, including Lewis's fusion of divergent mythology and biblical sources, are manifested. This deeper level is reflected in the construction of truth, heaven, and redemption, as it results from the incarnation of God and his entrance into our primary world, in Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection.
Ultimately, it must be said that the Christian worldview was such an intrinsic part of Lewis's personality, and consequently his writing, that it would naturally form a part of any secondary world created by him. The extent to which his worldview permeates the series is some measure of the extent to which this worldview permeated Lewis's intellectual as well as his spiritual life. However, it must be emphasised that Lewis's most immediate and conscious concern in writing The Chronicles of Narnia was to write a really good story—to be, first and foremost, entertaining, while simultaneously possessing all those characteristics that great stories had in Lewis's mind—including myth, adventure, and far-off worlds which impact on our own. Debate about the level at which Lewis intended audiences to be cognisant of his Christian apologetics will continue, and may never be adequately concluded. Indeed, the construction of Lewis's theory of apologetics as illustrated by The Chronicles is one area which would benefit from further examination.
Footnotes
1 Colin Manlove discusses the way myth and the engagement of the literary imagination are fused with Lewis's Christian apologetics. See C.N. Manlove, C.S. Lewis: His Literary Achievement, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 1-10.
2 Clive Staples Lewis, Surprised by Joy, Glasgow: Fount Paperbacks, 1978, pp. 65-66, 169.
3 Op. cit., p. 94.
4 Clive Staples Lewis, They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963), ed. Walter Hooper, London: Collins, 1979, September 5, 1931, pp. 1420, 1427-1938.
5 Wayne Martindale, “Myth”, in The C.S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia, ed. Jeffrey D Schultz and John G West Jr, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1998, p. 288. Martindale, “Myth”, p. 288.
6 Quoted at the beginning of Clive Staples Lewis, “Forms of Things Unknown”, in The Dark Tower and Other Stories, ed. Walter Hooper, London: Harper Collins, 1977. The quote is from: Lewis, Surprised by Joy, pp. 170-175. Lewis, They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963), p. 427.
7 Lewis, They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963) , October 18, 1931.
8 James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore, New York: Random House Publishing, 1981.
9 Colin Duriez, Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship, Hidden Spring, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2003; Ralph C. Wood, The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle-Earth, Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.
10 Walter Hooper, Past Watchful Dragons: The Narnian Chronicles of C.S. Lewis, New York: Collier Books, 1979, p. 64.
11 In a 1999 article Salwa Khoddam considered that such “typological thinking” was a key element in Lewis's view of mythology, and that such use of mythological motifs provided Lewis great creative freedom. By 2001, Khoddam had softened her rhetoric to consider mythology as merely creating analogues, allegorically of biblical imagery in the Chronicles of Narnia. See Salwa Khoddam, “Balder the Beautiful: Aslan's Norse Ancestor in the Chronicles of Narnia”, Mythlore 22, no. 3 (1999), p. 66; “‘Where Sky and Earth Meet’: Christian Iconography in C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, Mythlore 23, no. 2 (2001).
12 Clive Staples Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition, London: Oxford University Press, 1956, pp. 124-25.
13 Wesley A. Kort, C.S. Lewis Then and Now, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 142. Kort argues that in Lewis's work creation is a more important theological catalyst than is the atonement. This is notwithstanding that the actor and agent of creation is also the actor in the atonement narrative in The Chronicles of Narnia.
14 References in Genesis to God speaking creation into existence include: Gen 1:1, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24; as well as later references Psalm 33:6 and Heb 11:3 in addition to John 1.
15 Clive Staples Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, London: Fontana Lions, 1980, pp. 93-99.
16 Op. cit., p. 99. Just as theologians often replace “Word” with Jesus, so too, for our purposes could we replace “Word” with Aslan. The spirit of this substitution is confirmed in The Magician's Nephew as Digory muses that “When you listened to his song, you heard the things he was making up”.
17 John P. Dickson, The Genesis of Everything: The Thought World of the Bible's Account of Creation. (Centre for Apologetic Scholarship in Education, 2004 [cited 12 August 2004]); available from http://www.case.edu.au/fileuploads/2TheGenesisofEverything.pdf.
18 Lewis, The Magician's Nephew. Creation of the stars, planets and constellations, p. 93; Creation of light, p. 94; Creation of the sun, p. 95.
19 Op. cit., p. 95.
20 Op. cit., p. 24.
21 Human beings, “sons of Adam and daughters of Eve”, are hierarchically invested with sovereignty over Creation and all in it by the creator, Aslan, explicitly recalling a similar investiture in Genesis 1:26-28. The Magician's Nephew serves to provide a foundation for this hierarchy, which is present in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where the loyal Narnian “talking beasts” serve the four Pevensie children without question.
22 Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, p. 105.
23 Touching noses is a traditional form of greeting among Polynesian cultures.
24 Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, p. 107-8.
25 The Greek pneuma is translated as both spirit and breath.
26 Lewis, The Magician's Nephew, p. 108.
27 Noah's Ark is a standard recognisable children's story motif both within and outside a biblical context. In theological terms, the aftermath of the flood is widely considered a type of creation in that it is a reversal of the creation process before a renewal takes place. The selection of pairs of animals signifies the commencement of the redemptive process. Genesis 7:11ff shows that judgment takes the form of total destruction of the order created by God before a renewal and redemptive process. This is a pattern repeated throughout the Old Testament. See Don A Carson et. al., eds., New Bible Commentary Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 1994, p. 66.
28 Frazer, pp. 4, 213.
29 Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, ed., The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Enderby, Leicester: Blitz Editions, 1990, p. 705.
30 It is interesting to ponder whether this is in some way related to a nickname of Chevalier Charles Edward who was often referred to as “King over the water”. See op. cit., p. 707.
31 Frazer, pp. 90-95.
32 Jack Tresidder, Symbols and Meanings, London: Duncan Baird Publishers, 2000, p. 58.
33 Clive Staples Lewis, The Horse and His Boy, The Chronicles of Narnia, London: Harper Collins, 1980, p. 158. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the scene beyond the end of the world where Aslan appears as a lamb is an obvious parallel for the “Lion lies down with the lamb” in Isaiah 11:16. But even more literally specific is John 21:12 which says, “As soon as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread” which is refigured by the children sharing a meal of fish over coals with the lamb. The dual character of the lion and the lamb is one of the characteristics of the messianic kingdom described in Isaiah as evidence of a return to prelapsarian innocence.
34 Paul talks about this in Hebrews. See also Romans 5:14 which describes Adam as “a type of the one who was to come” (Jesus).
36 1 Peter 5:8. See also David Lyle Jeffrey, “C.S. Lewis, the Bible and its Literary Critics”, Christianity and Literature 50, no. 1 (2000).
37 Kathryn Ann Lindskoog, The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land; the Theology of C.S. Lewis Expressed in His Fantasies for Children, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973, p. 46ff.
38 Majorie Lamp. Mead and Lyle W Dorsett, eds., C.S. Lewis: Letters to Children London: Simon & Schuster, 1995, 22nd January 1952, p. 1929.
40 This New Testament statement recalls words from the Old Testament books of the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.
41 Tresidder, p. 14.
42 Clive Staples Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, London: Harper Collins, 2001, p. 99. David Lyle Jeffrey, ed., A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1992, p. 15. Biblical scholars have argued that Isaiah 34:14 refers to Lilith (the screech owl). See Carson et al., eds.
43 2 Thessalonians 2:9; c.f. Mark 13:5-6, 21-23.
44 For general discussion on the concept of worldview, see David Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2002; James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept, Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2004.
45 Lewis also concluded that “the modern who dislikes the Christian fathers would have disliked the pagan philosophers equally, and for similar reasons”. See Clive Staples Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, ed. Walter Hooper, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 47.
46 Charles Moorman, The Precincts of Felicity: The Augustinian City of the Oxford Christians, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1966, p. 109.
47 Kort, p. 87.
48 Corbin Scott Carnell, “Allegory”, in The C.S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia, ed. Jeffrey D Schultz and John G West Jr, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1998, p. 71.
49 Op. cit.
50 David C Downing, “Jack is Back: The Search for the Historical Lewis”, Christianity Today, Feb 3 1997; Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis: A Biography, London: Souvenir Press, 1988; J.B.S. Haldane, “Auld Hornie, F.R.S.”, in Shadows of the Imagination, ed. Mark Hillegas, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969, pp. 17-18.
51 David C Downing, Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C.S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992, p. 59.
52 Naomi Wood, “Paradise Lost and Found: Obedience, Disobedience, and Storytelling in C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman”, Children's Literature in Education 32, no. 4 (2001), p. 245.
53 James T Como, “Rhetorica Religii”, Renascence 51, no. 1 (1998), p. 4.
54 Green and Hooper, p. 163; Hooper, p. 99.
55 Clive Staples Lewis, Letters, ed. W.H. Lewis, London: Fount Paperbacks, 1988, pp. 16-17.
56 George Sayer, Jack: C.S. Lewis and His Times, 1st ed., San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 187. Tolkien's opinion is somewhat specious given his own eclecticism.
57 Colin Duriez, A Field Guide to Narnia, Downers Grove, Illionois: Intervarsity Press, 2004, p. 164.
58 David Holbrook, “The Problem of C.S. Lewis”, Children's Literature in Education 10 (1973). Holbrook seems preoccupied with sexual connotations and Freudian themes in the series and denies any influence of Lewis's classical education while claiming that Lewis adheres to an extreme form of Calvinist predestination theology that doesn't concede any notion of free will. The latter contention starkly contradicts scholars like Vaus and Khoddam who both specifically highlight Lewis's tendency toward Arminianism. See Khoddam, “‘Where Sky and Earth Meet’: Christian Iconography in C.S. Lewis's The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”.; Will Vaus, Mere Theology, Downers Grove, Illinois: Intervarsity Press, 2004.
59 Ralph C. Wood, “The Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien”, Renascence 55, no. 4 (2003), p. 10.
60 Gregory Wolfe, “Essential Speech: Language and Myth in the Ransom Trilogy”, in Word and Story in C.S. Lewis, ed. Peter J. Schakel and Charles A. Huttar, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991, p. 65.
61 A.D. Nuttall, “Jack the Giant Killer”, VII (Seven) 5 (1984).
62 Lewis was not referring to the Tao as it is known in Chinese philosophy; rather he used it to describe a way of life and a theory of existence. He adopted the term because it was not overtly religious.
63 There are internal contradictions in Lewis's Platonism. Lewis rejected aspects of Platonism including the image of a distant God as well as the disregard for the body and the over-emphasis on a life of redemption both in this life and the next. See Wolfe, p. 75; Wood, “The Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien”, p. 6.
64 For a discussion of this aspect of Lewis's Platonism, see Wood, “The Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien”, pp. 4-5.
65 Hooper, p. 123.
66 Raymond Carter Sutherland, “Theological Notes on the Origin of Types, ‘Shadows of Things to Be’”, Studies in the Literary Imagination 8, no. 1 (1975), p. 5.
67 Lyle H. Smith Jr, “C.S. Lewis and the Making of Metaphor”, in Word and Story in C.S. Lewis, ed. Peter J. Schakel and Charles A. Huttar, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991, p. 23.
68 Op. cit., p. 27.
69 Rodney J. Payton, A Modern Reader's Guide to Dante's Inferno, New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1992, p. 4.
70 Wood, “The Conflict and Convergence on Fundamental Matters in C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien”, p. 5.
71 This is also consistent with Colossians 1:18.
72 D.A. Hart, Through the Other Door: A New Look at C.S. Lewis, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984, pp. 15-16; Francis J. Morris, “Metaphor & Myth: Shaping Forces in C.S. Lewis's Critical Assessment of Medieval and Renaissance Literature” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1977) pp. 26, 43-44, 69; Doris T Myers, C.S. Lewis in Context, Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994, p. 28.
73 Vincent Leitch et al., eds., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, New York: WW. Norton, 2001, pp. 611-625.
74 This may have been because attempts at textual commentary and interpretation that express codified meaning are often considered by scholars as marking the text as allegorical; this is the position of Quilligan, though it was earlier stated by Northrop Frye where he explained that true allegories need no commentary or “alllegoresis” because this is inherently suggested by the text. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, New York: Atheneum, 1967, pp. 89-90; Maureen Quilligan, The Language of Allegory: Defining the Genre, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979, p. 29.
75 Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, p. 149.
76 Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor, A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture, Engaging Culture, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2003, p. 103-4.
77 Clive Staples Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Glasgow: Fontana Lions, 1980, pp. 85-87.
78 T.A. Shippey, “The Chronicles of Narnia”, in Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature, ed. Frank N Magill, Englewood Cliffs New Jersey: Salem Press, 1983, pp. 248-55.
79 Owen Barfield, “Introduction”, in Light on C.S. Lewis, ed. Jocelyn Gibb, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965, p. xviii. [emphasis in original].
80 Op. cit.
81 Op. cit. [emphasis in original]
82 Op. cit., p. xix.
83 See also John 1 where it is made clear that John the Baptist is not the “light”.
85 J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories”, in Folk and Fairy Tales, ed. Martin Hallet and Barbara Karasek, Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 1996, p. 271.
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