I wrote:

Interesting… Doug Gresham, CSLewis’ stepson, and an evangelical Christian (and a personal friend) says the Narnia stories were *not* meant by ‘Jack’ (as Doug calls his step-father) to be allegorical/evangelistic. That is, they’re pure fantasy – like Tolkein’s stuff. Frankly I put that into the ‘But That I Can’t Believe’ category. After Lewis’ conversion, his whole life was geared to promoting a Christian apologetic…

Mark responded:

J R R Tolkien seemed to think the Chronicles of Narnia were allegories.

C S Lewis contradicts himself on the issue.

AGAINST …..

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From http://members.lycos.co.uk/Jonathan_Gregory76/faq.htm

By an allegory I mean a composition (whether pictorial or literary) in which immaterial realities are represented by feigned physical objects, e.g. a pictured Cupid allegorically represents erotic love (which in reality is an experience, not an object occupying a given area of space) or, in Bunyan, a giant represents Despair.

On 24 December 1959 Lewis wrote the following to a schoolgirl named Sophia Storr:

When I started The Lion, Witch and 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. This of course I did understand and the whole series became Christian.

But it is not, as some people think, an allegory. That is, I don’t say ‘Let us represent Christ as Aslan.’ I say, ‘Supposing there was a world like Narnia, and supposing, like ours, it needed redemption, let us imagine what sort of Incarnation and Passion and Resurrection Christ would have there.’ See?

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FOR ……..

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from http://cslewis.drzeus.net/papers/apostle.html Apostle of the Imagination

Jeremy Halcrow

editor/journalist with Anglican Media Sydney

This article first appeared in the Spring 1998 Edition of ‘Southern Cross Quarterly,’ which is put out by Anglican Media Sydney (Australia)

….

But for some children, Narnia is a very direct stepping-stone to Christ. Clearly, Lewis had this in mind when writing the Narnia series. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Aslan says that he is known in our world by another name. Hila, an 11 year-old, wrote to Lewis, asking Aslan’s name in this world. Lewis wrote back:

“As to Aslan’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there been anyone is this world who: (1) arrived at the same time as Father Christmas; (2) said he was the son of a great emperor; (3) gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered and killed by wicked people; (4) came to life again; (5) is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb… Don’t you really know His name in this world? Think it over and let me know your answer!”5

Dorsett, L and Lamp Mead, M ed. CS Lewis Letters to Children, New York, Macmillan, 1985

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“Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what age group I’d write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out ‘allegories’ to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.” (Of Other Worlds, p. 36)

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The Kilns, Headington Quarry, Oxford 18 Dec. 1959 Dear Sieveking

(Why do you ‘Dr’ me? Had we not dropped the honorifics?) As things worked out, I wasn’t free to hear a single instalment of our serial [The Magician’s Nephew] except the first. What I did hear, I approved. I shd. be glad for the series to be given abroad. But I am absolutely opposed – adamant isn’t in it! – to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare. At least, with photography. Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter. A human, pantomime, Aslan wld. be to me blasphemy.

All the best, yours C. S. Lewis

[Letter to BBC producer Lance Sieveking (1896-1972), who has written at the top: ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ and, after the address, the phone number “62963”.]

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C S Lewis, even after his conversion to Christianity, was noted for telling dirty jokes and pissing his pants in public. Read “In Search Of C S Lewis” Edited by Stephen Schofield (Bridge Publishing Company: South Plainfield, New Jersey). It includes interviews with A J P Taylor, Malcolm Muggeridge and George Sayer and many of Lewis’ friends and aquaintances.

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