Milton, Spenser and The Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for the C.S. Lewis NovelsIn 1950, Clive Staples Lewis published the first in a series of children's stories that became The Chronicles of Narnia. The now vastly popular Chronicles are a widely known testament to the religious and moral principles that Lewis embraced in his later life. What many readers and viewers do not know about the Chronicles is that a close reading of the seven-book series reveals the strikingly effective influences of literary sources as diverse as George MacDonald's fantastic fiction and the courtly love poetry of the High Middle Ages. Arguably the two most influential sources for the series are Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen and John Milton's Paradise Lost. Lewis was so personally intrigued by these two particular pieces of literature that he became renowned for his scholarly studies of both Milton and Spenser. This book examines the important ways in which Lewis so clearly echoes The Faerie Queen and Paradise Lost, and how the elements of each work together to convey similar meanings. Most specifically, the chapters focus on the telling interweavings that can be seen in the depiction of evil, female characters, fantastic and symbolic landscapes and settings, and the spiritual concepts so personally important to C.S. Lewis. |
From inside the book
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... appear necessary to our self understanding and not at all anachronistic.” N.S. Brooks prefaced his refutation of many of Lewis's statements regarding The Faerie Queene by asserting that “There are few books on the student's shelves ...
... appear in more than one installment of the series, is Jadis, the White Witch. Jadis is most certainly another incarnation of the same bad mother archetype who rears her sometimes ugly head in fairy and folk tales as wicked stepmother ...
... appears with all the trappings of royalty and an usurped name. As Lucy reports, “She calls herself the Queen of Narnia though she has no right to be queen at all.... And she drives about on a sledge, drawn by a reindeer, with her wand ...
... appear royal and harmless. Like Duessa, who makes her “speedy way” (I.v.¡9.9) to get aid from Night, Jadis is a “terribly practical” (MNN 72) person who uses disguise when she must, but who essentially uses whatever means she has at her ...
... appears in much of his literary and apologetic writing, one of his most insightful analyses of sterile and therefore joyless sex lies in his examination of the artifice within the Bower of Bliss in the second book of The Faerie Queene ...
Contents
17 | |
The Depiction of Evil Men Mortals Monsters and Misled Protagonists | 51 |
Girls Whose Heads Have Something Inside Them The Characterization of Women | 77 |
An Inside Bigger Than Its Outside Setting and Geography | 107 |
Knowing Him Better There Spirituality and Belief | 135 |
Conclusion | 159 |
Chapter Notes | 163 |
Bibliography | 177 |
Index | 183 |