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2nathanielcampbell
Interestingly, C. S. Lewis was not the only literary giant to die on Nov. 22, 1963. Aldous Huxley also passed away that day. And of course, on this side of the Atlantic, that day also saw the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
(Peter Kreeft used that coincidence to write a whole dialogue exploring various twentieth-century philosophical perspectives, with the three men representing orthodoxy, atheism, and secular humanism, respectively: Between Heaven and Hell.)
(Peter Kreeft used that coincidence to write a whole dialogue exploring various twentieth-century philosophical perspectives, with the three men representing orthodoxy, atheism, and secular humanism, respectively: Between Heaven and Hell.)
3timspalding
It's sad he died in 1963. It would be interesting to know what he thought of the events of the 1960s, from Vatican II to the moon landing.
4theretiredlibrarian
Ah, I'll never forget the lady who wanted to remove The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe from the public library I worked at. I could not convince her the "hidden message" behind the book, nor that the author was a well-respected theologian. And of course, she had never read the book. The title alone was what put it on her list (along with the entire genre of fairy tales and other suspect titles).
I didn't discover Narnia until I was in college. No idea how I missed it before then, as I spent so much time in the library.
I didn't discover Narnia until I was in college. No idea how I missed it before then, as I spent so much time in the library.
5nathanielcampbell
>4 theretiredlibrarian:: In my experience, however, the Chronicles of Narnia have been sufficiently embraced by the evangelical community over the last decade or two (facilitated I think by the Disney film versions, which will always, in my opinion, remain inferior to the 1980's BBC productions) that they didn't recognize the cognitive dissonance of objecting to Harry Potter because it was about "witchcraft" while simultaneously celebrating Narnia.
Tolkien I think grabs a middle ground (a middle earth, to pun?) between the two, as the Christian allegories in his work are much more deeply nuanced than in the Narnia books; while the self-sacrificing savior motifs in Rowling are sprung from their Christian peculiarities into the fashionable modern "spiritual but not religious" cateogry.
That is, Lewis' attempts at allegory were often rather hamfisted compared to Tolkien's, and I think part of the reason was his insistence (in e.g. The Allegory of Love) that allegory must be treated quite separately from symbolism. On the one hand, Lewis was trying to rescue (late) medieval allegory from the dustbin into which Romantic-era notions of its inferiority to symbolism (think Goethe, for example) had dumped it; on the other hand, I think his insistence that allegory must be valued on terms separate from the symbolic (which he keenly identified with the sacramental, in the broad, Augustinian sense) misses the ways in which allegory participates in the symbolic.
Tolkien I think grabs a middle ground (a middle earth, to pun?) between the two, as the Christian allegories in his work are much more deeply nuanced than in the Narnia books; while the self-sacrificing savior motifs in Rowling are sprung from their Christian peculiarities into the fashionable modern "spiritual but not religious" cateogry.
That is, Lewis' attempts at allegory were often rather hamfisted compared to Tolkien's, and I think part of the reason was his insistence (in e.g. The Allegory of Love) that allegory must be treated quite separately from symbolism. On the one hand, Lewis was trying to rescue (late) medieval allegory from the dustbin into which Romantic-era notions of its inferiority to symbolism (think Goethe, for example) had dumped it; on the other hand, I think his insistence that allegory must be valued on terms separate from the symbolic (which he keenly identified with the sacramental, in the broad, Augustinian sense) misses the ways in which allegory participates in the symbolic.
6timspalding
They're for different ages.
7John5918
>5 nathanielcampbell: I don't have a copy with me at the moment to check, but didn't Tolkien reject allegory in his introduction to Lord of the Rings?
8MyopicBookworm
He rejected certain rather superficial allegorical interpretations of The Lord the Rings, especially by those who declared confidently that the Ring WAS the Bomb, etc. But he didn't reject allegory in principle: Leaf by Niggle is a fairly straight allegory.
