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. |
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... criticism. 8. Evil in literature. 9. Spirituality in literature. ¡0. Christianity in literature. I. Title. PR6023.E926C5335 2007 823'.9¡2—dc22 2006033¡92 British Library cataloguing data are available ©2007 Elizabeth Baird Hardy. All ...
... criticism, or apologetics. The more I read, the more I began to see how Lewis's love for and understanding of The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost had shaped his creation of the stories I had loved since childhood. I began to suspect ...
... critics tend to treat the Narnian stories with a measure of respect not usually a›orded to “juvenile literature” because Lewis himself was clearly an important and brilliant scholar whose work on many levels remains relevant and vital ...
... critic, and novelist, was well aware that didactic or heavy-handed children's stories, laden with things children “should” like, insulted the intelligence of any reader over ten years old and held little appeal even for younger readers ...
... Criticism remains one of the most refreshing and rational examinations of how we should judge the value of literary works, rather than simply falling back on the academic “canon” and the “right” books. “At his memorial service, Austin ...
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 |