Tolkien didn’t like the Narnia books because they were pretty allegorical, and also because Narnia wasn’t a closed system like Middle-Earth. The children come and go, Santa Claus visits, fauns and dryads drink tea. There is a lot of jumbled mythology in Narnia.
C. S. Lewis actually wrote an enormous number of Christian apologetics (meaning defence of), and books explaining Christianity. Well, it always seems like an enormous number to me, anyway.
Sorry for the hijack. I was going to mention Good Omens, but I find I don’t have much to say, besides that it’s full of Christian symbols while being (message-wise) pretty obviously not Christian. Sorry.
I’m curious, because it seems an entirely separate thing, why some people mention his apologetics and other nonfiction exposition on Christianity. They form what I would consider his main work after his conversion. (I read almost all his nonfiction before ever seeing his fiction.)
What I’m asking is, why does his exposition and apologetics make Narnia an allegory? Seems to be two completely separate issues. I don’t think anyone would ever argue that Narnia isn’t Christian; what was on the table was whether being Christian made it an “allegory” or not. Quite obviously it’s a Christian work, but according to the author, he did not intend them as allegory by his well-reasoned definition of the term, and in fact looking again at some dictionary definitions I am more convinced that he was correct. Why?
Because it was a “supposal” as he was very fond of explaining. “What if” Jesus went to another world and chose to incarnate and die and resurrect there? The intent was to tell a new story based on “what if,” not to represent abstract ideas through symbols (which is allegory.) They were supposals, possibilities. At least, according to the intent of the author. What could or might be, if.
I honestly don’t see what his other works have to do with whether or not Narnia should be considered an allegory.
Sorry, I am not trying to drift or hijack either. I didn’t think it would be appropriate to start a whole new thread, but this is an interesting drift, so I hope no one minds too much.
The question of whether the Narnia books are an allegory has come up in quite a few threads already. Do a search on “Lewis,” “Narnia,” and “allegory” to see just how many. I think it comes down to the definition of an allegory. To Lewis, who was an expert on Medieval and Renaissance literature, an allegory was something like Pilgrim’s Progress (or Lewis’s own Pilgrim’s Regress), where every single character and place can be mapped to a virtue, a vice, a temptation to a Christian, a comfort to a Christian, etc. In that sense, the Narnia books were not allegories, just stories with Christian applicability. I would personally prefer to say that the Narnia books are loose allegories, not strict allegories like Pilgrim’s Progress.