Welcome to the debut of a new feature here on NarniaFans.com…a occasional column dealing with “Narnia essentials.” Some of you may be thinking everything about Narnia is “essential,” and I’d have to agree with you in many ways. However, there has to be some limits placed on what I’ll be focusing upon. Primarily I’ll center things around just the actual books by C.S. Lewis. While the movie versions of The Chronicles of Narnia are very interesting to me, it’s the books that inspire me more and that is a key reason for narrowing my musings to just that aspect.
To start things off I’d like to begin at, well, the beginning! That is, how Narnia was birthed. Not how the land was created as told in the stories, but how C.S. Lewis came up with the idea for this great masterpiece. While the first story was not published until he was 51 years old, the initial thoughts for the first story, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe began when Jack (that’s what his friends called him) was 16 years old. Can you image having a 35 year gap between getting an idea and having it in print?
In an essay Lewis wrote about the experience he shared that as a teenager he saw a picture in his mind “of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.” However, it wasn’t until just over two dozen years later that he sat down to try to see what he could do with that vision. Sadly, nothing much came from this attempt and so it was a failure. Then in 1948 everything changed when Jack was having dreams of lions. Thus the character of Aslan was born and “He pulled the whole story together.”
That’s all for now. But if you want to learn more about Narnia and other things related to C.S. Lewis check out my site EssentialCSLewis.com.
The series (especially Aslan…my favorite character is a parable. Lewis also said that Aslan= parable= Jesus Christ. Jesus… wild king of the jungle (our world)gave up His life..so that we may live life the way the Creator meant us to live.
Thanks for commenting. Please feel free to let me know if there are any topics or questions you want to see me deal with in my column.
This is cool! I am going to enjoy reading these!
Glad to hear you are looking forward to them. Is there any particular topic or question you want to see addressed?
Glad tO see new posts!
I’m happy you are excited. Let me know if you have a question or topic you’d like to see me focus upon.
Hi William,
Thanks for initiating this.
One topic I’d be interested in concerns the extent (if any) that specific issues or themes drove CS Lewis’ thinking in the books. I think we can all see the influence of Genesis, the Gospels and Revelations on “the Magicians Nephew”, “the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “the Last Battle” respectively. (Though maybe there are some less obvious things even in those that you could comment on…?) In the other books it’s less obvious (at least to me)whether there was some particular idea that lay behind them.