The Chronicles of Narnia

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The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children written by C. S. Lewis. They present the adventures of children who play crucial roles in the unfolding history of the realm of Narnia where some animals talk, magic is rampant, and good is fighting evil. The books are also known for their illustrations by Pauline Baynes.

Table of contents

1 Is Narnia an allegory?

2 Numbering the books, publication order or internal chronology?

3 Narnia in other media

4 External links

Is Narnia an allegory?

The books can be read as allegory, though a strict allegorical reading could be quite confusing and reductionist). The books do contain many allusions to Christian ideas (Aslan, the lion, is the equivalent of Jesus Christ). Lewis, a devout Christian, had stated his intention to make the Chronicles serve as a means to introduce Christian theological concepts to children, while remaining entertaining enough to hold young audiences.

In this Lewis succeeded. The Chronicles of Narnia have become favourites with both children and adults. The extra theological load is well incorporated; the books are not weighty in the least, unlike Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and can be read for their adventure, colour, and fun without concern for the larger issues. Lewis himself claimed the books were not allegorical but "suppositional", more like what we would now call alternative history—supposing such a world as that described therein, and assuming the need for certain religious situations -- a divine Creation, a trinitarian element comparable to Jesus coming to the world, and others -- what would happen?

One of Lewis's early academic publications was The Allegory of Love (1936), about medieval allegories of courtly love. Consequently he preferred a strict definition of allegory, as he wrote to another young fan:

"I did not say to myself 'Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia'; I said, 'Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there, and then imagine what would happen.'"

On the other hand, Lewis did have a more loosely defined allegory in mind, as he wrote another fan:

"The whole series works out like this:

The Magician's Nephew tells the Creation and how evil entered Narnia,
The Lion etc. - the Crucifixion and Resurrection,
Prince Caspian - restoration of the true religion after a corruption,
The Horse and His Boy - the calling and conversion of the heathen,
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - the spiritual life (especially in Reepicheep),
The Silver Chair - the continuing war against the powers of darkness,
The Last Battle - the coming of Antichrist (the ape). The end of the world and the last judgement."

Numbering the books, publication order or internal chronology?

The books of the series, in the order of their publication, are:

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
Prince Caspian (1951)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
The Silver Chair (1953)
The Horse and His Boy (1954)
The Magician's Nephew (1955)
The Last Battle (1956)

The first American publisher, Macmillan, put numbers on the books and used the publication order. When Harper Collins took over the series, the books were renumbered using the internal chronological order, as suggested by Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham.

The Magician's Nephew (1955)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
The Horse and His Boy (1954)
Prince Caspian (1951)
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
The Silver Chair (1953)
The Last Battle (1956)

Gresham quoted Lewis's reply to a letter from an American fan in 1957, who was having an argument with his mother about the order:

"I think I agree with your order (i.e. chronological) for reading the books more than with your mother's. The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn't think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last. But I found as I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone read them. I'm not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published."

Narnia in other media

The Chronicles of Narnia were turned into a successful BBC television series in 1989–1991. Only The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Silver Chair were filmed. The Magician's Nephew, The Horse and His Boy, and The Last Battle were not filmed. Especially the final book, The Last Battle, is necessarily darker than the rest of the series, as it deals with the ending of Narnia, and by extension alludes to the end of our world.

There have also been BBC Radio dramatizations of the novels.

There are plans to make The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe into a film directed by Andrew Adamson and with a screenplay written by Ann Peacock. [1] (http://www.narnia.com/movie/index.htm) Like The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, the film is to be made in New Zealand. The website stuff.co.nz reported in December 2003 that "Work on the film begins [in January] in Auckland." [2] (http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,2761705a1860,00.html) Tilda Swinton has reportedly been cast as the White Witch.

A more recent British series of novels, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, has been seen as an "answer" to the Narnia books. The Dark Materials books favor science and knowledge over religion, but deal with many of the same issues and subject matter as the Narnia books.

The Chronicles of Narnia C. S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe \| Prince Caspian \| The Voyage of the Dawn Treader The Silver Chair \| The Horse and His Boy \| The Magician's Nephew \| The Last Battle
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