Narnia thoughts

Check here for a short review (really, just some thoughts) of the new Narnia film that I posted earlier tonight on The Muses site.

Other posts from that site (same topic, same night) are below:


How do we understand the allegorical elements in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?


A quote from Colin Duriez’ book Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship to start this discussion off:
“One of Tolkien’s central criticisms of Lewis’s Narnian stories was that they were too allegorical, too literally representative of Christian doctrine. Though Lewis did insert many pointers to what he calls ‘secondary meanings’ in Narnia, his intention was not to write allegory. He saw the Narnian stories as arising out of what he called a ‘supposal’—his ‘supposal’ was a world of talking animals—that set the frame of the stories. He explained this in a letter shortly before he died: ‘The Narnian series is not exactly allegory. I’m not saying “let us represent in terms of Mächen [fairy tale] the actual story of this world.” Rather “supposing the Narnian world, let us guess what form the activities in the [scheme of things] a Creator, Redeemer or Judge might take there.” This, you see, overlaps with allegory but is not quite the same.’”


2nd Post on Narnia
So, another post regarding the Narnia film--and a question: in reading around the web about the film and the responses to it, I've noted that quite a few Christians are handing out tracts before and after the film showings. Doesn't this defeat the whole concept? Didn't Lewis write story because it communicates in a way that a tract cannot? After all, Lewis was quite capable of writing an essay--and good ones too. Yet, he thought the imagination fertile ground for deep thinking (magic?).

How badly do we miss the point of Lewis' work while we are in the midst of a Lewis revival?