The Narnia Chronicles: Introduction

  There is a fascinating paradox involved when one considers the nature of the Narnia Chronicles.  As one reads, one can see a great many Christian truths and attitudes shadowed forth in the imagery.  But, in his essay “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said,” Lewis sternly denies that he began with a listing of Christian truths, asked himself how he could communicate them to children, and proceeded to shape the Narnia stories accordingly.  Rather, he began with some images that compellingly presented themselves to his imagination and proceeded to let them shape their own stories in the realm of Faerie.  And he insists that he was not writing exclusively for children, but for adults as well; good fairy tales appeal to all ages.  

But, as I say, a fascinating paradox is involved.  While Lewis insists he was not writing to communicate Christian truths, the Narnia stories are powerfully shaped by a Christian view of reality and convey an appreciable range of Christian teachings and attitudes.  While they are completely free from any direct Christian images or references to Christian thought, they arouse the reader’s imagination to catch breath-taking insights into ultimate reality, which is, of course, Christian.  And all the while readers may be totally unaware of the full import of the truths they are imbibing.

To be aware, therefore, of the true nature of the Chronicles makes reading them a fascinating exercise for the Christian reader because , as they are working their magic upon one’s imagination, they provide one with insights into Christian reality which are quite beyond the ability of the intellect fully to articulate, but which greatly enhance their significance to one’s mind.  This is the genius of Christian fantasy writing. Considering them in this fashion is what we are about in this series of posts.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was first published in 1950, and for some half-dozen years Lewis devoted his time to writing the other six of the Narnia Chronicles.  Why Lewis, whose many scholarly publications had established him as both  a major literary historian and critic and an outstanding apologist for Christianity, should in mid-career abruptly turn to writing fairy stories, was a puzzle to many.  The answer is simply that he was keenly aware that commitment to Christianity was much more then intellectual agreement with its truths and creeds.  True faith must be experiential and active; it is, in short, exercising love for God and for others, and for this, imaginative commitment is essential.  Lewis undertook to demonstrate how exercising the imagination is essential to possessing a true view of Reality, which is Christian.

As Lewis mused on those experiences that led to his own conversion, he recalled the major role which fairy stories, such as George MacDonald’s Phantastes, played in bringing him to Christian commitment and active Christian living.  Stories arouse the imagination, and the genius of  fairy stories is that they both demand imaginative involvement and appeal to the deep-seated longings of the human heart.  They are much more than allegorical; their images can give imaginative glimpses into that with is quite beyond verbal articulation and which, to use Tolkien’s phrase, may cause “a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art. . . .” (From “On Fairy Stories”), as they envision something of the Divine. 

MacDonald, Tolkien and Lewis all insist that they are not writing primarily for children, but to the child-like, whether–to recall MacDonald’s phrase--they are “seven years of age or seventy.”  So it is with this in mind that we turn to consider The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and The Last Battle.  Give your imagination to them, with no intention of intellectually “figuring them out,” and allow them to have the effects that Lewis intended.