The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, completed in the winter of 1949 and published in 1950, tells the story of four ordinary children: Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie. They discover a wardrobe in Professor Digory Kirke's house that leads to the magical land of Narnia, which is currently under the spell of the evil White Witch. The four children fulfill an ancient, mysterious prophecy while in Narnia. The Pevensie children help Aslan (Aslan is the Turkish word for lion) and his army save Narnia from the evil White Witch, who has reigned over the kingdom of Narnia in winter for 100 years.Prince Caspian
Completed in the autumn of 1949 and published in 1951, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia tells the story of the Pevensie children's second trip to Narnia, during which they discover that Miraz, uncle of Prince Caspian, had forced him to flee into the woods and usurped the throne, declaring himself a king. Once again, the children set out to save Narnia, aided by the Narnians and ultimately by Aslan to return the throne to the rightful ruler, Prince Caspian. This is also the last time Peter is featured until The Last Battle.The Horse and His Boy
Completed in the spring of 1950 and published in 1954, The Horse and His Boy is the first of the books that does not follow the previous one sequentially. The novel takes place during the reign of the Pevensies in Narnia, an era which begins and ends in the last chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The story is about Bree, a talking horse, and a young boy named Shasta. Both of the main characters have been held in bondage in Calormen, a country to the south of Narnia. By chance, they meet each other and plan their return to Narnia and freedom. On their journey they discover that the Calormenes are about to invade Archenland, and they plan to arrive there first to alert the King.The Silver Chair
Completed in the spring of 1951 and published in 1953, The Silver Chair is the second Narnia book Lewis wrote without the Pevensie children. In their place, Aslan calls Eustace back to Narnia together with his classmate Jill Pole. There they are given four signs to find Prince Rilian, Caspian's son, who had been kidnapped ten years earlier. Eustace and Jill, with the help of Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle and many others, face great danger before finding Rilian, who has lost his memory due to enchantment by a silver chair.The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Completed in the winter of 1950 and published in 1952, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’ returns Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their priggish cousin, Eustace Scrubb, to Narnia. Once there, they join Caspian's voyage to find the seven lords who were banished when Miraz took over the throne. This perilous journey brings them face to face with many wonders and dangers as they sail toward Aslan's country at the end of the world.The Magician's Nephew
Completed in the winter of 1954 and published in 1955, the prequel The Magician's Nephew brings the reader back to the very beginning of Narnia where we learn how Aslan created the world and how evil first entered it. Digory Kirke and his friend Polly Plummer stumble into different worlds by experimenting with magic rings that Digory's uncle made, and encounter Jadis (The White Witch) and witness the creation of Narnia. Many long-standing questions about Narnia are answered in the adventure that follows.The Last Battle
Completed in the spring of 1953 and published in 1956, The Last Battle chronicles the end of the world of Narnia. Jill and Eustace return to save Narnia from Shift, an ape, who tricks Puzzle, a donkey, into impersonating the lion Aslan. This problem causes a fierce battle between the Calormenes and King Tirian together with Jill, Eustace and a faithful dwarf.Publication order
The Lion, the Witch and the WardrobePrince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician's Nephew
The Last Battle
Chronological order
The Magician's Nephew
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle
Influences on Narnia
Lewis' life
Lewis' early life has echoes within the Chronicles. Born in Belfast, Ireland in 1898, Lewis' family moved to a large house in the country when he was seven. The house contained long hallways and empty rooms, and Lewis and his brother invented make-believe worlds while exploring their home. Like Caspian and Tirian, Lewis lost his mother at an early age, and like Edmund, Jill, and Eustace, he spent a long, miserable time in English boarding schools. During World War II, many children were evacuated from London because of air raids. Some of these children stayed with Lewis at his home in Oxford. (Wilson 2005)
The Inklings
Lewis was part of the Inklings, a literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England. Its members included such notables as J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson. Readings and discussions of the members' unfinished works were the principal purposes of meetings. These readings and discussions were usually held on Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis's college rooms at Magdalen College. The Inklings were also known to gather at a local pub, The Eagle and Child.
Pagan influences
There are certain Christians and Christian organizations who feel that The Chronicles of Narnia promotes "soft sell paganism and occultism", because of the recurring pagan themes and the supposedly heretical depictions of Christ as an anthropomorphic lion. Satyrs, fauns, centaurs, dwarves, werewolves, giants, and even the pagan god Bacchus and the Maenads are depicted in a positive light, when they are distinctly pagan motifs. Even an animistic "River god" is portrayed in a positive light. (Chattaway 2005), (Berit 2005) According to Josh Hurst from Christianity Today, "not only was Lewis hesitant to call his books Christian allegory, but the stories borrow just as much from pagan mythology as they do the Bible."(Hurst 2005)
Drew Trotter, PhD, president of the Center for Christian Study, noted that the producers of the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia felt that The Chronicles of Narnia closely follows the archetypal pattern of the monomyth as detailed in Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces. (Trotter 2005) Joseph Campbell himself felt that the New Testament adhered to the archetypal monomyth and was but "one version of mythic stories that can be found in many cultures." (Jacobs 2004) Both The Chronicles of Narnia and the New Testament are rife with Jungian archetypal imagery.
C.S. Lewis himself stated in an essay called Is Theism Important?:
"When grave persons express their fear that England is relapsing into Paganism, I am tempted to reply, 'Would that she were.' For I do not think it at all likely that we shall ever see Parliament opened by the slaughtering of a garlanded white bull in the House of Lords or Cabinet Ministers leaving sandwiches in Hyde Park as an offering for the Dryads. If such a state of affairs came about, then the Christian apologist would have something to work on. For a Pagan, as history shows, is a man eminently convertible to Christianity. He is essentially the pre-Christian, or sub-Christian, religious man. The post-Christian man of our day differs from him as much as a divorcee differs from a virgin." (Lewis 1994)
Name
The origin of the name Narnia is uncertain. It is possible that Lewis borrowed the name from his friend Tolkien or possibly vice versa. The latter wrote the Narn i Hîn Húrin or the Lay of the Children of Húrin about his ill-fated hero, Túrin Turambar. Narn is Sindarin for a lay or a poetic narrative, usually intended to be sung.
According to Paul Ford's Companion to Narnia there is no indication that Lewis was alluding to the ancient Umbrian city Nequinium renamed Narnia by the conquering Romans in 299 BC after the river Nar, a tributary of the Tiber. However, since Lewis's first successes at Oxford were in the classics and ancient history, it is quite possible that he came across at least seven references to Narnia in Latin literature. (Ford 2005) It is also interesting to note that Aslan means lion in Turkish.
Christian parallels
The Chronicles of Narnia contain many allusions to Christian ideas which are easily accessible to younger readers, however they are not weighty, and can be read for their adventure, colour, and mythological ideas alone. Because of this The Chronicles of Narnia have become favourites with both children and adults, Christians and non-Christians.
Although he did not set out to do so, in the process of writing his fantasy works, Lewis (an adult convert to Christianity) found himself incorporating Christian theological concepts into his stories. As he wrote in Of Other Worlds:
"Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument, then collected information about child psychology and decided what age group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out 'allegories' to embody them. This is all pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way. It all began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn't anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord."
Lewis himself maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". This is similar to what we would now call alternative history. As he wrote in a letter:
"If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all."
The Narnian universe
Most of The Chronicles of Narnia take place in the world of Narnia. The Narnian world itself is one world in a multiverse of countless worlds including our own. Passage between these worlds is possible, though rare, and may be accomplished in various fashions. Visitors to Narnia observe that the passage of time while they are away is unpredictable. For example, if one year had passed since one left Narnia and returned, a whole century, or perhaps only a week, could have gone by in Narnia. Narnia itself is populated by a wide variety of creatures most of whom would be recognizable to those familiar with Roman/Norse mythology and Irish/British fairy tales.
Inhabitants
Lewis largely populates his stories with two distinct classes of inhabitants: people from our own world and creatures created by the character Aslan and the descendants of these creatures. This is typical of works that involve parallel universes. The majority of characters from our own world serve as the protagonists of the various books, however some are only mentioned in passing. Those inhabitants that Lewis creates through the character Aslan are viewed as either of wonderful variety or a confusing hodgepodge, depending on the reader. Lewis does not limit himself to a single mythology; instead he borrows from many sources and adds a few more of his own to the mix.
Geography
The Chronicles of Narnia describe Narnia as one major landmass surrounded by an ocean. The ocean contains several islands; most of which as explored during the course of the series. On the main landmass are the countries of Narnia, Archenland, Calormen and Telmar as well as a variety of other areas which play a part in the narrative but are not described as countries. Lewis also provides glimpses of more fantastic locations that exist in and around the main world of Narnia.
Cosmology
A reoccurring plot device in The Chronicles is the interaction between the various worlds that make up the Narnian multiverse. A variety of devices are used to initiate these cross-overs which generally serve to introduce characters to the land of Narnia. The Cosmology of Narnia is not as internally consistent as that of Lewis contemporary Tolkien's Middle Earth, but works quite well given the more fairly tale atmosphere of the work. During the course of the series we learn, generally in passing, that the world of Narnia is flat, geocentric, has stars with a different makeup than our own, and that the passage of time does not correspond directly the passage of time in our world.
History
Lewis takes us through the entire life of the world of Narnia, showing us the process by which it was created, snapshots of life in Narnia as the history of the world unfolds, and how Narnia is ultimately destroyed. Not surprisingly in a children's series, children, usually from our world, play a prominent role as all of these events unfold. The history of Narnia is generally broken up into the following periods: creation, the rule of the White Witch, the Golden Age, the invasion of the Telmarines, the rule of King Caspian X, and the destruction of Narnia. Like many stories, the narrative is not necessarily always presented in chronological order.
Narnian chronology
A recurring theme throughout the series is the concept of Narnian time, and how it moves at different speeds, usually faster than time in our world. The one exception is in The Last Battle where it takes a week for the Earth people to arrange the rescue of King Tirian, but it only takes a few hours from his perspective. This time differential is introduced first in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when Lucy spends some time in Narnia with Mr Tumnus the faun, only to return to our world hours later, and discover that only a few minutes have passed. Despite the visits made by children from our world being in relatively close succession, massive leaps are made in Narnian time.
For example, when the Pevensie children return to Narnia in Prince Caspian, only one year in our world has passed since the events in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, while over a thousand Narnian years had passed.
Narnian time also seems to move at different speeds, as Eustace discovers upon returning to Narnia in The Silver Chair — not as much time as would have been expected from the Pevensies' experiences had actually passed, but enough for King Caspian, a youthful man in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, to become an old man.
Source and additional information: The Chronicles of Narnia
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