from the chicago tribune...

Think you know Narnia? Guide to C.S., `Chronicles'

By Robert K. Elder
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 8, 2005


C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), author of the seven "Chronicles of Narnia" books, was born in Northern Ireland and enjoyed a distinguished academic career, but did you also know:

- Clive Staples Lewis disliked his birth name, so he re-christened himself "Jacksie" circa age 4. As he grew older, friends called him "Jack."

- The Lewis family wardrobe is housed in the Marion E. Wade Center in Chicagoland's Wheaton College. It was hand-carved by Lewis' grandfather, Richard Lewis, in Northern Ireland in the mid-1800s, then shipped to Lewis' home outside Oxford in 1929. Visitors to the Wade Center are welcome to touch the wardrobe, but not climb into it. A sign reads: "The Wade Center assumes no responsibility for persons who disappear or are lost in the wardrobe."

- "The Chronicles of Narnia" is not a Christian allegory, Lewis argued, but rather a "supposal." In this case, "What if there was a world like Narnia that needed saving?" Aslan, the self-sacrificing lion of the series, serves as its Christ-figure.

- Lewis belonged to The Inklings, a group of literary types and academics in Oxford, England, during the 1930s and '40s. In Lewis' rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford, members read drafts of their work aloud on Thursday nights. Famous members include Lewis, "Lord of the Rings" trilogy author J.R.R. Tolkien and "War in Heaven" author Charles Williams.

- Also in the Wade collection at Wheaton College: The desk on which Tolkien wrote "Lord of the Rings."

- Tolkien and fellow academic Hugo Dyson helped convert Lewis to Christianity through their discussions of theology and myths. Christianity is the one truth myth, they posited, through which all the other myths reverberate and take themes -- particularly the death and resurrection of a god.

"They argued it's what all the myths point to, except in the case of Christianity it becomes historical fact," said Christopher Mitchell, director of Wade Center.

- The idea of a live-action movie of "The Chronicles of Narnia" didn't sit well with Lewis in 1959. In a letter to British Broadcasting Corp. producer Lance Sieveking, the author wrote: " . . . I am absolutely opposed -- adamant isn't in it! -- to a TV version. Anthropomorphic animals, when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare." He added that a "human, pantomime Aslan" would be "blasphemy."

He continued: "Cartoons (if only Disney did not combine so much vulgarity with his genius!) wld. be another matter."

The new live-action film "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" is produced, in part, by Walt Disney Pictures.

Given the technology of the day, says the Wade Center's Mitchell, Lewis feared the animals would look corny, and could not be treated with the proper dignity they deserved.

- During World War II, the Lewis family took in evacuee children from London while the German Luftwaffe conducted bombing raids on the city. The Pevensie children in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" are themselves evacuees.

- According to Lewis' brother Warnie, the youngest Pevensie child, Lucy, was based on Jill Flewett, one of the real evacuees hosted by the Lewis family. "She was described by Jack and Warnie as the closest person they'd ever met to a living saint. . . . " said Lewis' stepson Douglas Gresham in a recent interview.

- Flewett later married Clement Freud, the grandson of famed psychologist Sigmund Freud. Flewett became an actress using the name Jill Freud.

- In "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the children stay with Professor Kirke, who is a tribute to Lewis' academic mentor, W.T. Kirkpatrick. This same Professor Kirke shows up as Digory Kirke, protagonist of "The Magician's Nephew," the prequel to "Lion."

- Lewis loved and was inspired by the work of writer Edith Nesbit, author of such tales as "The Railway Children" and "Five Children and It." In her 1908 story "The Aunt and Amabel" a magical wardrobe serves as the entry point to another world.

- Despite their friendship, Tolkien didn't like Lewis' Narnia books. Marjorie Lamp Mead, co-author of "A Reader's Guide Through the Wardrobe" and associate director of the Wade Center, says the authors' views on fantasy literature were strikingly different.

"Tolkien's approach to created fantasy was to make a world so internally consistent . . . [that] you didn't have any reference points to take you out of the world. Lewis did more of a literary stew and he pulled things in from all over, including Father Christmas," she said. "For Tolkien that was disruptive and not consistent."

- Lewis died on Nov. 22, 1963, the same day as President John F. Kennedy and "Brave New World" author Aldous Huxley.