1 The Makings of CS Lewis’s Enchanted World of Narnia Professor Paulo F. Ribeiro MBA, PhD, PE,...

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The Makings of CS Lewis’s Enchanted World of Narnia

Professor Paulo F. Ribeiro

MBA, PhD, PE, IEEE Fellow

December 6, 2005 – 7PM

Student Activities Office

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Introductory Observations

• Introductory Observations (speaker)• The Author• The Makings of Narnia• A Taste of the Story• The Biblical Connections• Conclusion: The Magic Never Ends

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Introductory Observations

• My fascination with Lewis started in 1974 (University in Brazil)

• Theological writings first – my children brought me into Narnia

• Four years in England + reading everything Lewis wrote consolidated my appreciation

• Became a CS Lewis freak (according to my children)

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The Author: CS Lewis • C.S. Lewis: born in Belfast in 1898. • Educated in England (prep school – Oxford University)• Army in 1917, saw front-line combat• Returned to Oxford, graduated in 1922 and became a fellow of Magdalen

college in 1925. • An atheist in his boyhood - converted to Christianity in 1931.• Wartime religious talks on the BBC plus some other theological books brought

him fame (+Narnia)• Was part of the Oxford literary circle known as the Inklings, whose members

also included J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams. • In 1957 he married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American with whom he had

corresponded with. Joy was already suffering from bone-cancer at the time of their marriage, and died in 1960.

• Died on November the 22nd 1963, the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

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The Author: (Jack)

• Clear thinking and writing – I have never found anyone who writes better.

• Came from the outside (able to appreciate what we (who come from the inside) take for granted

• He has helped me to overcome chronological snobbery, post-modernism, to think more objectively. His writings: precise, penetrating logic, vivid, lively, and playful imagination.

• Taught English to sing – (Kreeft: “What Christian ever made Latin dance as Augustine did? What Christian ever taught

English to sing as Lewis did? Their words are like diamonds, full of light yet full of heaviness; full of grace and truth.”)

• I found the perfect match: Brazilian Music & Lewis’s English• He always points to the ultimate source: Christ.• His theology may not be perfect, but the practice was exemplary

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The Author: (Jack)•Premature reader and writer (from a bookish family)

•In Surprised by Joy Lewis tells of his first stories of dressed animals and courtly “knights-in-armor•He was between 7 – 9 years old when he wrote a full history of Animal-Land complete with map and colorful illustrations (Boxen)•Boxen, however, had not much to do with Narnia, except for the anthropomorphic beasts and had the least hint of wonder.

•Suffered from an undefinable desire (romantic longing)

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The Makings of Narnia

•Fairy Tales – Tolkien’s influence (the Gospels contain a story of a kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories.” •Marvels, beauty, mythical, symbolic, allegorical, etc. •JRR Tolkien (-) and Roger Lancelyn Green (+) Reactions•The Dedication of the LWW: Myth and the Reality Come Together •A Series Which Almost Never Was

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•Jack: Not very familiar with children•What is it: Allegory, Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Myth ?•Jack: Defending Fairy Tales•Fantastic Creations – Mythological Figures & Father Christmas•How it all begun

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Why Fairy-Tales?

“Hence a man who admits that dwarfs and giants and talking beasts and witches are still dear to him in his fifty-third year is now less likely to be praised for his perennial youth than scorned and pitied for arrested development. If I spend some little time defending myself against these charges, this is not so much because it matters greatly whether I am scorned and pitied as because the defense is germane to my whole view of the fairy tale and even of literature in general.”

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How Effective are Fairy-Tales?

I mean, the presence of beings other than human which yet behave, in varying degrees, humanly: the giants and dwarfs and talking beasts. I believe these to be at least (for they may have many other sources of power and beauty) an admirable hieroglyphic which conveys psychology, types of character, more briefly than novelistic presentation and to readers whom novelistic presentation could not yet reach. Consider Mr. Badger in The Wind in the Willows — that extraordinary amalgam of high rank, coarse manners, gruffness, shyness, and goodness. The child who has once met Mr. Badger has ever afterwards, in its bones, a knowledge of humanity and of English social history which it could not get in any other way.

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What about the Violence in the stories? Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies,

let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker. Nor do most of us find that violence and bloodshed, in a story, produce any haunting dread in the minds of children. As far as that goes, I side impenitently with the human race against the modern reformer. Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book. Nothing will persuade me that this causes an ordinary child any kind or degree of fear beyond what it wants, and needs, to feel. For, of course, it wants to be a little frightened.

http://us.st11.yimg.com/store1.yimg.com/I/biblestudies_1871_4155918

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Are These Books for Children or Adults?

• "No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally worth reading at the age of fifty. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all."

• “The boy does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little more enchanted." The child reading the fairy tale is delighted simply in desiring, while the child reading a "realistic" story may establish the success of its hero as a standard for himself and, when he cannot have the same success, may suffer bitter disappointment.

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The Makings of NarniaIs It Right to Mix Theology and Fairy-Tales?

(Personal)

• “I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find so hard to feel as one told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings … But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not steal past these watchful dragons?” I thought one could.”

• Fantasy has the power to reach all ages, regardless of educational background or intellectual ability!

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Is It Right to Mix Theology and Fairy-Tales? (Literary)

From a theological perspective Lewis saw true myths and stories as memories or echoes of God Himself and He left us with human imagination as their receptor. He explained this relationship in describing how he came to write the Narnia Chronicles, as a mythological expression of the Gospel story:

"It was he [the imaginative man] who, after my conversion, led me to embody my religious belief in symbolical or mythopoeic form, ranging from Screwtape to a kind of theological science fiction. And it was of course he who has brought me, in the last few years, to write the series of Narnian stories for children; not asking what children want and then endeavoring to adapt myself (this was not needed) but because the fairy tale was the genre best fitted for what I wanted to say."


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• Relation to our world• Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve• The British humor• The idea of Aslan• LWW Fall 1950 – Cautious Reviews• Pre-baptism of imagination.

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The Makings of NarniaLewis’s Fundamental Concepts

Nature

1 – Romantic Appreciation: Reverent and Insatiable Delight “This is no thaw; this is spring”

2 – The Supernatural“But do you really mean, Sir,” asked one of the boys, “that there could be other worlds – al over the place, just round the corner – like that?”

3 – Fallen Nature: Evil was not an abstract but a realityWatch Edmund and the White Witch to see evil in operation“We find ourselves in a world of transporting pleasures, ravishing beauties, and tantalizing possibilities, but all constantly being destroyed. Nature has all the air of a goof thing spoiled.”

Nature is more than a background setting for the action of his characters“Either there is significance in the whole process of things as well as in human activities, or there is no significance in human activity itself.” C.S. Lewis, The Personal Heresy, 1939.

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Lewis’s Fundamental Concepts

God1 – Aslan: Simple / Powerful Image

“And now a very curious thing happened. None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning---either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in its inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or beginning of summer.”


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God

2 - Bodily Form

"Is-is he a man?" asked Lucy."Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion.""Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.""That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.""Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy."Safe?" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.""I'm longing to see him," said Peter, "even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point."

"Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed.Rev. 5:5

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Lewis’s Fundamental ConceptsGod

3 – Authority

"Will you promise not to- do anything to me if I do come?" said Jill."I make no promise," said the Lion. Jill was so thirsty now that, without noticing it, she had come a step nearer. "Do you eat girls?" she said. "I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion.It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it. "I daren't come and drink," said Jill. "Then you will die of thirst," said the Lion. "Oh dear!," said Jill, coming another step nearer. "I suppose I should go and look for another stream then." "There is no other stream," said the Lion.


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Lewis’s Fundamental ConceptsGod

4 – Love"I asked, are you ready?" said the Lion."Yes," said Digory...But when he had said "Yes," he thought of his Mother, and he thought of the great hopes he had had, and how they were all dying away, and a lump came in his throat and tears in his eyes, and he blurted out:"But please, please--won't you--can't you give me something that will cure Mother?"Up till then, he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. "My son, my son," said Aslan. "I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another...“ MN


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Lewis’s Fundamental Concepts

God

5 – Justice and MercyAslan used physical affliction to affect the cure of sin as well as the punishment of sin. In the VDT Eustace is turned into a dragon because of his irresponsibility.Aslan dies for Edmund in the LWW

6 - Creativity and Care"Creatures I give you yourselves," said the strong, happy voice of Aslan. "I give you this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and i give you myself. The Dumb Beasts whom I have not chosen are yours also. Treat them gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.“ MN


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Humanity

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization--these are mortal - But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses

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• Consequently -----• Moral education. . . does not look much like teaching. One cannot have

classes in it. It involves the inculcation of proper emotional responses and is as much a "knowing how" as a " knowing that." . . . The picture we get when we think of “knowing how" is the apprentice working with the master. And the inculcation of right emotional responses will take place only if the youth has around him examples of men and women for whom such responses have become natural.

• Lewis, like Aristotle, believes that moral principles are learned indirectly from others around us, who serve as exemplars. . . .

• This is also the clue to understanding the place of the Chronicles of Narnia within Lewis's thought. They are not just good stories. Neither are they primarily Christian allegories (in fact, they are not allegories at all).

• Rather, they serve to enhance moral -education, to build character. . . . To overlook the function of the Chronicles of Narnia in communicating images of proper emotional responses is to miss their connection to Lewis’s moral thought.

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The Chronicles of Narnia

-(1-4)London Children being evacuated to the country during WW II. Children Transported from this world into a world faire-tale creatures belonging to a great lion (four books on this scheme). The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe,

- (5)The tale of two native children of that world who are also chosen by the great lion to serve the land of Narnia and to know him in a special way.

-(6)The beginning of the world of Narnia - the intrusion of two Victorian children into the newborn world begins the complications which give rise to all the later adventures. (The Magician’s Nephew)

--(7)The end of Narnia (Last Battle)

Each story complete in itself - George MacDonald style. Fragmented - Strong unity of philosophy and consistency of doctrine.

Lewis remained faithful to his original intention to write stories for children while adding in subtle moral and spiritual complexities.

The Chronicles can delight the senses as they challenge and stir the soul.

A Taste of the Story

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The LWW - Main Theme: Winter to Spring

1. Lucy accidentally found herself in Narnia via the wardrobe

2. After a visit with Mr. Tumnus the Faun, Lucy returned to England

3. Edmund accidentally found himself in Narnia and meets the Witch

4. Edmund became addicted to magic candy (Turkish Delight)

5. Peter and Susan assumed that Lucy’s Narnia was unreal

6. All four children found themselves in Narnia

7. The four learned about Narnia while visiting Mr. And Mrs. Beaver

8. Edmund sneaked away to betray the others to the White Witch

9. Edmund made his way to the Witch’s castle and became captive there

10. As the children and the Beavers fled, Father Christmas arrived with gifts

11. The Witch discover that her perpetual winter was beginning to thaw

12. Aslan appeared, greeted his friend ands knighted Peter

13. The Witch demand her right to kill Edmund

14. Aslan gave himself to the Witch to die in Edmund’s place

15. Aslan came back to life

16. Aslan revived all victims of the Witch who had turned to statues

17. The children ruled Narnia for many happy years before returning to England


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The LWW and the Bible

Chapter 1 – The Learning / Discovery Mandate Ecclesiastes: 11:9

Chapter 2 – Integrity Jeremiah 9:8

Chapter 3 – Wisdom and the Reality of Evil Proverbs 11:12

The Biblical Connection

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The LWW and The Bible

Chapter 4 – Temptations Proverbs 9:17

Chapter 5 – Courage to Stand on Your Own Proverbs 12:18

Chapter 6 – Responsibility Proverbs 4:18


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Chapter 7 – Permanent Values & Rewards Isaiah 26:8

Chapter 8 – Deception Isaiah 40:28

Chapter 9 – The Inner Ring Deals with the Devil Romans 8:5


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Chapter 10 – Restoration Isaiah 52:7

Chapter 11 – The Power Behind it All Songs of Songs 2:11-12

Chapter 12 – Our Own Battles 1 Kings 2:2


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Chapter 13 – A Committed Commander Psalm 51:4

Chapter 14 – The Apparent Victory of Evil John 15:13

Chapter 15 – Unfolding and Restoration Matthews 28:2

Chapter 16 – Subversive Restoration Amos 3:8

Chapter 17 – Assurance of God’s Presence James 1:12


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Conclusion: The Magic EndsWhen I say ‘Magic’ I am not thinking of the paltry and pathetic techniques by which fools attempt and quacks pretend to control Nature. I mean rather what is suggested by fairy-tale sentences like: 'This is a magic flower, and if you carry it the seven gates will open to you of their own accord. " I should define magic in this sense as ' objective efficacy which cannot be further analyzed'.

Magic, in this sense, will always win a response from a normal imagination because it is in principle so ' true to nature'. Mix these two powders and there will be an explosion. Eat a grain of this and you will die. Admittedly, the' magical' element in such truths can be got rid of by explanation; that is, by seeing them to be instances or consequences of larger truths. …Now the value, for me, of the magical element in Christianity is this. It is a permanent witness that the heavenly realm, certainly no less than the natural universe and perhaps very much more, is a realm of objective facts-hard, determinate facts, not to be constructed a priori, and not to be dissolved into maxims, ideals, values, and the like.

Enlightened people want to get rid of this magical element in favor of what they would call the' spiritual ' element. But the spiritual, conceived as something thus antithetical to 'magical', seems to become merely the psychological or ethical. What I insist on is that it can never be reduced to zero. If it is, what remains is only morality, or culture, or philosophy.

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