“One Little Hour”

Last night Michael Gembola, Scott Pickering, and I attended 10th Presbyterian Church in Center City Philadelphia. I was slightly disappointed that I wasn’t going to be able to watch the Super Bowl, but in hindsight I don’t regret the decision one bit (even though I missed the greatest upset in Super Bowl history).

After the evening service Dr. Michael Ward of Cambridge presented his dissertation work on the Chronicles of Narnia, recently published as Planet Narnia by Oxford University. Dr. Ward’s presentation was flawless and his evidence compelling. He titled the talk “Imagining God: CS Lewis and the Seven Heavens.”

Ward’s premise is that CS Lewis organized the seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia around a hidden theme. Lewis scholars have long posited a variety of themes, including the popular Christological motif with Aslan as the Christ figure and the tales organized as the story of redemption. The principle problem with a strictly Christological organization is that Aslan only directly appears in three of the books and has to share time with Father Christmas, dryads, nymphs, and other mythological creatures.

Ward’s epiphany came while reading a book of Lewis’s collected poems. He came to the Jupiter section from ‘The Planets’ and read the phrase, “Of wrath ended and woes mended, of winter passed, and guilt forgiven.” Realizing that he had heard that line before, in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Ward looked closer and found overwhelming evidence that Lewis had organized the seven books of the Chronicles around the seven heavens of the old geocentric cosmology.

Each book corresponds with one of the seven planets. In medieval and renaissance cosmology the planets were named after gods and assigned personalities. Lewis was an expert in medieval and renaissance literature and often lectured on the practice known as transferred classicism. Renaissance authors commonly used mythological figures and stories to illustrate Biblical truths. Lewis’s books were meant to illustrate different aspects of God’s character through transferred pagan and classical symbols.

Ward’s work should make literary scholars rethink the literary quality of Lewis’s work. The Chronicles had been considered something of a hodge-podge before, but a unifying theme tying in medieval cosmology should raise Lewis’s literary stock considerably.

I am not a literary critic by any stretch of the imagination, but his argument was so masterfully presented that Michael, Scott, and I were enrapt the entire time. All you literary scholar friends of mine (Lincoln, Abby, Jessica, and Timmy, I am talking to you) should check this book out. I also believe the argument clear enough to be understandable and enjoyable for the layman(myself) who enjoys literature.

For more information about Michael Ward and Planet Narnia here is his website: www.planetnarnia.com