C.S. Lewis in Narnia: Allegory, or Not?

[he] did not say to [him]self ‘Let us represent Jesus as He really is in our world by a Lion in Narnia’; [he] said ‘Let us suppose that there were a land like Narnia and that the Son of God, as he became a Man in our world, became a Lion there and then imagine what would happen’. (Rilstone 4)

ory?” I ask myself. Especially upon continued reading, where Lewis is stated to have written another piece of fan mail that the whole series is fitted into allegorical categories in the fact that:

With such blatant allusions to Christ and his life, I can hardly resist nodding towards allegory in categorizing the Chronicles. In C. S. Lewis “Shadowlands”, the film version of Lewis’ biography, he is reported to have told his wife, Joy, that “[he]’s never stopped trying to imagine heaven...[and that] [his] stories are about heaven.” This seems to be another assertion to the allegory he so adamantly denies creating.

With so many references, resemblances, and, indeed, Lewis’ feelings of deja vu, how can one dismiss his Chronicles as stories and not allegories?! Sure, L’Engle has a point in associating his series with anagogical levels of interpretation, however I believe that much of what Lewis writes in these stories is more related to allegorical transmissions of the Bible than he accredits. May that all have been subconscious in his writing, or may it have been intentional from the start, I still believe that, despite his entertaining tales and outright denial of allegory, the Chronicles of Narnia are, indeed, a collection of allegories such as has been and will be enjoyed by children the world over.

Ford’s examples on pages 52-56 of the Companion to Narnia, which I have looked up in my copy of the Chronicles and in the Revised Standard Version of the Bible from 1952, include the following:

He also “encouraged [a] child to decipher the greater significance of [Aslan]” by thinking of one who:

L’Engle, stating her struggles in understanding the difference between allegorical and anagogical levels, prefers to relate the allegorical level to similies, “this is like this,” whereas the anagogical level is more like a metaphor, “this is this; it contains within it something of that which it is trying to express” (xiv). She also sees the allegorical writing as “beating [her] over the head with [its] allegory,” being obvious and almost “preachy” in its writing. Anagogical writing is more subtle and “never conscious,” allowing one to perceive the moral subconsciously and almost “read between the lines” (xiv).

Some topics in this essay:
Aquinas L’Engle, Silver Chair, Chronicles Narnia, Jesus Christ, Father Christmas, Thomas Aquinas, Chronicles Lewis, Son God, , Magician’s Nephew, anagogical levels, silver chair, lion witch wardrobe, witch wardrobe, magician’s nephew, voyage dawn, lion witch, chronicles narnia, horse boy, allegorical anagogical, allegorical anagogical levels, voyage dawn treader, dawn treader,