Stories & Soliloquies

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    • The Real Order to Read Narnia: A Third Way

      Posted at 3:40 am by Michelle Joelle, on February 4, 2015

      People often debate about the reading order of CS Lewis’ Narnia series, some arguing that we should read them in the order they were published, while modern publishers issue them according to the stories internal chronology (loosely speaking).

      Really, Brenton Dickieson gives us the only real way to read the Narnia series; that is, to re-read them, in various orders, learning something different each time, with one caveat: the very first time you pick up the series, start with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardobe, and I would add, end with The Last Battle. Everything in between is up for debate, but those two are proper bookends.

      A Pilgrim in Narnia

      NarniaWhen my son and I sat down to go through Narnia together, perhaps when he was 7 and 8, I had no doubt that we would read them as C.S. Lewis wrote them–the Published Order. That means starting with The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe—even though The Magician’s Nephew is a prequel. Now Nicolas is beginning to go through the Focus on the Family Radio dramatization of the series as he does his drawing. Because they are reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe at school, he wanted to read them in a different order. Without blinking, I suggested he go through the CDs in the order of Internal Chronology, staring with The Magician’s Nephew.

      This decision-making process made me realize that it’s time for me to come out of the wardrobe on what I think is the real reading order for Narnia.

      The Lion Witch Wardrobe (1stEd) LewisAnd to warn…

      View original post 1,523 more words

      Posted in The Waste Book | 0 Comments | Tagged books, C.S. Lewis, narnia, reading, reblog
    • Into the Golden World

      Posted at 12:00 pm by Michelle Joelle, on October 8, 2014

      Recently, I was lucky to attend a talk on the purpose and power of children’s literature given by Daniel McInerny. I loved his conception of children’s literature as an adventure into the golden world of Dante’s terrestrial paradise, a yearning for a world where innocence is fought for and, hopefully, won in the end.

      I also recently finished rereading all seven books of CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, and while there were definitely some highly regrettable issues with Lewis’ portrayal of the Calormenes, it’s very openly a work that yearns to win back the innocence of paradise. I wanted to share some of my favorite moments.

      1) From The Magician’s Nephew, when Aslan wakes all of Narnia, p 138:

      Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.

      There’s something about the context and delivery of this line that makes me feel like I’m in the woods as the trees come alive, and it makes me smile to think of it.

      2) From The Horse and His Boy, when Bree the Narnian horse is ashamed of his cowardice in the face of danger, and feels he has lost everything dear to him, p 161:

      My good Horse, you’ve lost nothing but your self-conceit. No, no, cousin. Don’t put back your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You’re not quite the great Horse you had come to think, from living among poor dumb horses. Of course you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that. It doesn’t follow that you’ll be anyone very special in Narnia. But as long as you know you’re nobody very special, you’ll be a very decent sort of Horse, on the whole, and taking one thing with another.

      This is sort of an odd excerpt to highlight, but it’s one I find very comforting. While I’ve never been quite the star that Bree was, I often hold myself to a higher standard than is reasonable, and it helps to remember that I’m just an ordinary person, and that it is ok to sometimes make mistakes and fall short of my goals. Humility can breed contentedness.

      3) From The Silver Chair, when the Queen is trying to convince our heroes that there is no world outside of the cave in which they’re trapped and asks them what the sun is, p 186:

      “Please it your Grace,” said the Prince, very coldly and politely. “You see that lamp. It is round and yellow and gives light to the whole room; and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing which we call the sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole Overworld and hangeth in the sky”.

      “Hangest from what, my lord?” asked the Witch; and then, while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added, with another of her soft, silver laughs: “You see? When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun in but a tale, a children’s story.”

      Of course, there is a sun and the Witch is tricking them. When I recently read this section, I just happened to be teaching the Allegory of the Cave from Plato’s Republic. They go through the same analogical argument for the existence of Aslan from the presence of a cat in the cave, and the Witch comes to the same conclusion on p 188:

      The Witch shook her head. “I see,” she said, “that we should do no better with your lion, as you call it, than we did with your sun. You have seen lamps, and so you imagined a bigger and better lamp and called it the sun. You’ve seen cats, and now you want a bigger and better cat, and it’s to be called a lion. Well, ’tis a pretty make-believe, though, to say the truth, it would suit you all better if you were younger. And look how you can put nothing into your make-believe without copying it from the real world, this world of mine, which is the only world. But even you children are too old for such play. As for you, my lord Prince, that are a man full grown, fie upon you! Are you not ashamed of such toys? Come, all of you. Put away these childish tricks. I have work for you all in the real world.”

      And of course, she’s wrong about this too.

      In moments like these, I feel that yearning to believe in the sun and in Aslan and in happy endings – and also in The Good. I feel that yearning for the golden world, for innocence, and like a child, in these moments I can take comfort that there is something bigger than myself, whatever it might be.

      And that’s exactly why I love to write – and why I still read – children’s literature.

      Posted in The Waste Book | 4 Comments | Tagged C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, Dante, narnia, quotes
    • The Eternal Summer of Spare Oom

      Posted at 11:45 am by Michelle Joelle, on June 25, 2014

      Welcome back to my mini-series on Literary Time Consciousness, where I discuss various facets of how literature (and stories in general) can manipulate and undermine our understanding of time and temporality.

      In C.S.Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, the two main worlds we experience as readers operate by two entirely different timelines. Narnia, at the beginning of the book, is temporally stuck in an eternal winter (always winter, but never Christmas). When Lucy Pevensie goes into Narnia, she feels as though she’s been gone for hours, when to her family, she’s been missing for only a few minutes at the most. When all four Pevensie children go to Narnia and live out lives as kings and queens, they barely miss any time back in “our” world. It’s an incredibly simple device, but it invites so many layers of reflection on how we experience time in reality, in our imaginations or in stories, and even in eternity.

      Even people who might never consider time to be anything but an objective measure that marches on without their consent nevertheless notice that they experience time differently at different times in their lives. Children who cannot wait for their birthday feel as though it will never come. When we’re little, summers last a lifetime and afternoons spent in a game of make-believe expand to fit our imaginations. When we get older we lament how fast time goes, noting that the years feel shorter as each one passes by. We grumble that the summer is over too fast, that the years slip by without our even noticing, and that here is never enough time for anything. We’re always under slept, overworked, and letting time slip through our fingers.

      The explanation I most often hear is that the objectivity of time turns our experience of it into a percentage. When you’re only two years old, a year is literally half of your life, but when you’re thirty years old, it’s merely one thirtieth. Of course you’ll experience it faster.

      But I’m not convinced that’s the whole story. When I look at Lewis’ Narnia, I’m swept up by the idea that you can find pockets of time if you look for them in the right places, or in the right way. It makes me think that how you live, think, and dream can actively change how you experience time. If you’re open to finding Narnia, then you can find moments that expand.

      I’m reminded of when I used to travel a lot for weekend dance workshops. They’d start on Friday night with an evening dance, and then after midnight we’d head to a late night dance. After a shower and a nap, we’d be up for 4-5 hours of classes on Saturday, another evening main dance, followed by another late night. Then on Sunday there’d be another 4-5 hours of classes, and another dance in the evening. Add in meals, traveling with friends, live bands, and more, and you’d have a weekend that felt like a full week. It was incredible how much life you can pack into a short amount of time, how full a weekend can feel. Every dance would expand too, and every song – especially a good dance to a live musician. It’s difficult to describe, but there are moments when you’re so full of joy and excitement, so given over to the music and the muscle memory that it’s like stepping into Narnia for hours in what turns out to be just a few minutes.

      In the same way, reading a story can fill our moments with a temporal experience that seems to exceed the objective passing of time. We can have tea with the Fawn and feel our heads grow heavy with the weight of the hours, even though barely a fraction of that time passes in our own world. And so does every good story beckon to its audience as the Fawn beckons to Lucy:

      Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me?

      Posted in Series | 8 Comments | Tagged C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, literary time consciousness, narnia, spare oom, temporality, time
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