As I said, I’m away from by books, so I can’t answer till next week.
And while I’m using the computers in Internet cafes, I can’t use spellcheck, so I make stupid mistakes like “by” for “my.”
How so?
Like a spellcheck would catch that. :dubious:
C.S. Lewis is regarded by some as one of the best writers about what it means to be an Anglican Christian. Mere Christianity is an excellent case for orthodox Christianity. He writes about what Christians beleive, and how Christians should act, the meaning of original sin, the transcendent Creator God, and the divinity of Christ, and Christ’s resurrection. These are orthodox Christian beliefs.
I could rephrase foolsguinea’s statement by saying that C.S. Lewis’ writing is so profound, so fresh, that he makes us see orthodox aspects of religion in an entirely new light.
I knew this about CS Lewis. I’ve read Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, Suprised by Joy. That’s why I was surprised to see **Furt’s ** assertion that CS Lewis was “ignorant”.
On re-reading **Furt’s ** post in light of your reply, I see that I whooshed myself. Oh well; it’s not the first time, and probably will not be the last!
No, I think that Furt meant that foolsguinea was unaware that C.S. Lewis is a great defender of traditional Anglican Christian beliefs. Aslan is not a Krishna figure. Aslan is Christ, if Christ were in Narnia.
From here:
Wow. “Maugrim” and “fire-stones of the Secret Hill”? What could possibly be the purpose of such changes?
Had this made it to the screen, I’d have burned down as many movie theatres as possible before they caught me.
But centaurs do graze, don’t they? I seem to remember at the end of the Silver Chair they talked about how the centaurs had to first eat a normal human breakfast (eggs and sausages and toast and all that) then had to eat a horse (ie, graze, at least in my mind!) breakfast, since they had two stomachs.
I think this is the most important part. I forget where (The Discarded Image?) but Lewis said that he didn’t even see a need to read a book exactly in order (though he wasn’t necessarily talking about novels). He also thought that trying to divine an author’s intentions about their own writing was largely a waste of time.
I’d imagine his reply wasn’t meant to be speaking with authority on the proper way to do it, merely to provide the information that indicated one needn’t stick to his ‘plan’, since that as such didn’t really exist.
I’d always wondered whether the World Ash Tree was really Yggdrasil, which would fit in with Lewis’ and Tolkien’s grounding in Norse mythology. (Look for the carving of a tree on the wardrobe in the movie trailer.) Likewise, Fenris was the child of Loki, and took the shape of a wolf. These changes from the original text are interesting. Perhaps Lewis felt that mythology would be more acceptable in the United States?
I wonder if the original names were grounded in Christianity. Perhaps “The Secret Hill” is an oblique reference to Golgotha?
Maugrim? I got nothin’. Maybe created specifically for the book.
I have a hardcover set in the original ordering, and with the American wording. Not the original Pauline Baynes dust jackets, but I think I’ll keep them.
I’ve been a fan of these books for over forty years, and I can’t believe that I never knew this (it’s probably old hat to most of you folks), but I just found out that Lewis passed away the same day that J F Kennedy was assasinated.
best to all,
plynck
I don’t think this is the case. He got a lot of fan mail from the States, from people he knew nothing about. Some of these correspondences lasted a long time, even though, in those days of limited air travel (and Lewis travelled very little, if at all, outside the British Isles between the end of the Great War and his holiday in Greece with Joy shortly before she died), the correspondents were never to meet. Thus, he wrote 28 letters to Joan (at the time of the start of their correspondence just a young girl) over a period of many years. Joan lived in New York, wintering in Florida, but was I believe unknown to Lewis. Similarly, Laurence was a nine-year old when he (in fact, his mother - see below) first wrote to Lewis in 1955 - again from America. Interestingly, when he did write to his godchild Sarah, he addressed her as ‘My dear Sarah’, while the other kids were typically ‘Dear xxx’.
Re the ordering of his children’s books, it’s also worth bearing in mind that when CSL wrote to Laurence in 1957, his wife was “very, very ill”, as he writes in the final paragraph of the same letter. So, such matters would have seemed rather insiginificant at the time.
Re the Aslan/Jesus point, in 1955 Laurence’s mother wrote a letter to Lewis c/o Macmillan’s because her son was worried that he loved Aslan more than Jesus (dear kid!). Within ten days, she received Lewis’s lengthy reply, putting the boy at ease. (After that, Laurence himself wrote to CSL quite a bit.) Actually, Lewis’s is a beautiful letter - the kind that brings tears to one’s eyes. Addressing Laurence’s mum’s main point, CSL writes: “Laurence can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he’s doing. For the things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things that Jesus really did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan, he is really loving Jesus.”
Going back (in fact, forward) to the 1957 letter, Lewis writes the following after telling Laurence (and his mum) about his wife’s serious illness. “I am sure Aslan knows best and whether He leaves her with me or takes her to His own country, He will do what is right.” The identification of Aslan with Jesus is made as strong as it might be without being made explicit.
Plynck writes:
> These changes from the original text are interesting. Perhaps Lewis felt that
> mythology would be more acceptable in the United States?
I’m pretty sure that the small changes are not in any sense an “Americanization” of the book. Lewis just decided after finishing the books that he could make a couple extra mythological references by changing the names of a couple characters. He almost certainly intended these changes to be made in all the editions of the books, but for some reason these changes only happened to be communicated to the American publisher.
This is like the discussion of why the American publisher changed the title of the first Harry Potter book to Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone. It’s not the case that “sorceror” would be familiar to American children while “philosopher” wouldn’t, as in the British title Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. This is purely and simply a matter of the publisher saying, “I can change the book in any way I want. No one else’s opinion matters, including that of the author.” This is why the American publisher randomly changes some British terms in the Harry Potter books to American terms, even though it’s done in a bizarrely sporadic fashion.
Well, I certainly didn’t read all the books in order, & I don’t feel too bothered by it.
As for Aslan being a Christ-type, I still maintain that he is C.S. Lewis’s idea of a Christ-type, but in his multiple appearances through history, far closer to one of the Olympian gods as portrayed in Ovid’s Metamorphoses than the singular prophet-god of Xtianity. My comparison of Aslan to Krishna was not that well thought-out. I was dimly remembering that Krishna, or Vishnu, was incarnated multiple times.
None of this is a slam against Jack Lewis. I think his intuitive idea of what “the son of the Great Emperor from across the sea” should be like is a greater clue to nature of the god that human hope seeks than the addled myths of Christian tradition.
People like to talk about C.S. Lewis as a Xtian apologist, but I credit him with saving me from fundamentalist Xtianity.
Actually, I credit Lewis with showing me a vision of the divine order that Christianity finally convinced me it wasn’t. What really saved me was something else. But Lewis did perhaps prepare to accept the possible legitimacy of polytheism, which is helpful in my intermittent quest for truth.
Sorry for my confusion here, but did you mean “This is like the discussion etc.” or This is *not * like the discussion etc."? It would appear that in the first case the changes were at Lewis’ request and changed back after his death, and in the second they were at Rowling’s publisher’s direction with no direction from her.
In rereading this thread I saw your earlier post that Lewis’ changes had no particular reference to the nationality of his audience; sorry I missed that. In the Rowling/HP example, however, I would disagree. With “The Philosopher’s Stone”, I think that the publisher was deliberately dumbing down the title to make it sound sexier. Which is a damn shame, if I might be allowed to continue the minor hijack about substitutions. One of the joys in reading The Narnian Chronicles as a child was discovering English terms that differed from those used in America, such as “torch” for what we call a flashlight. American HP publishers have done as much as they could to cushion their readers from any potential culture shock :rolleyes:
best to all,
plynck
I meant that the discussion of why the small changes in names were made in the American editions of the Narnia books and not the British editions is similar to the discussion of why the American authors changed the title of the first Harry Potter book and, fairly randomly, changed a few of the British slang terms in the Harry Potter books in the following sense: Plynck had written the following:
> Perhaps Lewis felt that mythology would be more acceptable in the United
> States?
It’s pretty clear that this isn’t true. (Among other things, I know enough about both American and British culture to know that in no sense is discussion of mythology more acceptable in the U.S. than in the U.K.) The only reason that the changes were made in the American editions of the Narnia books and not the British ones is that just by accident the list of changes happened to reach the American publisher and not the British publisher.
This seems similar to me to the claims of some people that the reason that the American publisher changed the title of the first book and rather randomly changed some British slang to American slang because American children are less likely to know what a philosopher is and don’t want to have to experience British slang. I don’t think so. If these changes are dumbing down the book, it’s because the publisher is dumb and not American children.
Exactly so.
From a 10-minute show reel, the news is encouraging (link is from AICN, so YMMV).
Can’t wait. 