Customer Reviews

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis

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I heard Dr. Ward speak back in the summer of 2006, and I was instantly both a fan and a skeptic. His theory about the reason for seven Chronicles of Narnia is fascinating, beautiful, and--so I thought--implausible. But since Dr. Ward was a very compelling speaker (and he's coming to speak at the school where I teach; see his tour schedule at www.planetnarnia.com ), I bought the book and am in chapter four at the moment. Wow! I'm more a fan than ever, and barely a skeptic. I've come to the conclusion (like Jim Como) that if Dr. Ward is wrong, it doesn't even matter, because his reading is completely lovely, plausible, useful, scholarly, thorough, and everything else a critic's reading can be. But it's more, too. It seems that he is inside of C. S. Lewis's head, thinking CSL's thoughts after him (if that's not sacrilegious!), quoting from all CSL's works as glibly and facilely as if he wrote them (or more; CSL was notoriously forgetful of his own writings, though of nobody else's), tying together disparate elements with ease and grace. His memory is prodigious, his scholarship impeccible, his writing clear and organized, his case lively and delightful. If Narnia needed any boost in popularity or any raising in the academic mind, here it is!

Narnia lovers behold this book. Michael Ward's revelatory work is too edifying to ignore. For half a century we read (or had read to us) C.S. Lewis's magnificent Chronicles of Narnia. We love them because they captivate us.

The series has a mystery, however. Disparateness clouds the atmosphere; a lack of thorough artistry found in Lewis's other fiction. Lewis's mind is consistently meticulous and lucid, a chief trait of the medieval authors he taught professionally, and therein lies the secret.

More than allegory, yet nothing obviously more, Planet Narnia contends that Lewis made it so intentionally. Ward argues that each chronicle corresponds to one of the seven planets of medieval astrology. As a whole, they (the chronicles infused with the characteristic traits of the planets) create an atmosphere that is both honest to the human experience and consistent with the loveliness and sovereignty of Christ the Lord. The subtlety, an atmospheric quality, is consistent with Lewis's pneumatology, which maintains that unawareness of the Holy Spirit is a common condition in our human experience. Ward's case focuses on the peculiarities in The Chronicles, of which there are many, like the supposedly discordant appearance of St. Nicholas in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Suddenly they make sense - the jovial saint's laughter resonates like guilt forgiven.

Many critics mistook Lewis for slopping together a menagerie of characters and plots without a guiding principle, argues Ward. Rather, it seems that a combination of an allegorical element teetering the brink of believability and dissatisfaction, a well-known pejorative judgment by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lewis's deliberate imaginative subtlety kept readers orbiting the astrological inner meaning without fully understanding that which pulled them.

Planet Narnia is and claims to be a scholarly work. It is formidable, but as a reader I was pleasantly surprised by how cogently the argument runs. The Chronicles of Narnia are, after all, no Ulysses or Shakespearean play: the story is easy and the prose style is perfectly clear for everyone to enjoy. A work of literary criticism on such a matter-of-fact story lives or dies by its success in drawing out the facts or else garbling the matter. Ward excels in the former. Furthermore, Ward has not fluffed a Procrustean bed. Every proper literary question such as those of occasion, composition, and reception is considered thoughtfully and convincingly. Narnia is not scathed like the Planet Narnia cynics I know feared. Planet Narnia opens our eyes to something we already sensed: the kingly robes that the series has worn all along.

Ward does not argue that The Chronicles of Narnia fail at spiritual edification unless you accept his conclusion. He affirms that Narnia animates our moral imaginations with the glories of landscape, adventure, and righteousness whether or not readers recognize what (or Who!) is acting on them. Planet Narnia is merely a vestibule between the shade of a purblind enjoyment and spiritual convalescence - a sort of enjoyment that draws you further in and higher up. Narnia is a spiritual place that ought to be discerned spiritually. Lewis might add: heavenly, for the heavens do the declaring.

I have been anticipating reading Michael Ward's full treatment of his audacious thesis since I heard him lecture two years ago, and I must say that my expectations for Planet Narnia have been more than fulfilled. Not only does Ward present a staggering amount of evidence as proof that Lewis has "translated planets into plots" with his seven Narnia books, but he also presents his findings in a graceful and captivating style that one rarely finds in other literary criticism.

A great strength of the book is Ward's commanding grasp of all the works within Lewis' oeuvre. For young students of Lewis such as myself, Planet Narnia provides a taste of Lewis' less-often read essays, criticism, and poetry, as well as glimpses into the currents of thought that run through much of his work. Yet my favorite part of the book is Ward's assessment of the theological messages revealed in the planetary imagery. He succeeds in the same goal Lewis set out for himself in writing the Chronicles - to present the character of God to readers in reanimating and revelatory ways.

Planet Narnia presents so strong an explanation of the Chronicles that I find it hard to imagine anyone finishing the book unconvinced of Lewis' enduring genius, and Ward's remarkable achievement.

A deeper hidden meaning behind Narnia? "Yeah, right."

That's what I thought -- until I read the book.

Actually, that's not quite true either. I thought this only until I read Ward's FAQ on planetnarnia.com. Call me a sucker, but I think I was already hooked by about question 6. By hooked I don't mean I'd already accepted his theory line and sinker, but I knew I had to get me this book.

Book finally in hand, I decided I'd better start reading with my "skeptic's glasses" firmly in place. If I kept them on, I reasoned, and still came out the other end believing Ward's theory, there must be something to it. Well, my glasses came off about half way through Chapter 1.

Even aside from the content, Ward's clear style, his sincere tone, his obvious love as well as deep knowledge of Lewis's work -- all these contribute to making this fairly academic work very readable and (to me) incredibly interesting.

Ward's work opened my eyes to a whole bunch of stuff I'd never noticed in the Chronicles before. Not to mention the Ransom Trilogy and other of Lewis's writings.

One thing I considered a weakness was how Ward mentions that certain groups of words (say "swift" and "run" in HHB) are used very frequently in one particular Chronicle. But often he doesn't state that those words are not used with that frequency in the other Chronicles, so I wondered whether it proved anything.

I mentioned as much to Ward, who wrote me a helpful and prompt response. He said it's about the atmosphere, and the key thing is the words' context, not their number. "Context is everything," he added. And I guess he's right. (In fact, that's probably one of the main themes of the book.)

But to cut a long short -- this book is one of the most exciting non-fiction works I've read in a long time.

One reason I was so intrigued with Planet Narnia is that scholarly works on The Chronicles of Narnia are few and far between. Ever since Walden and Disney announced they were working on the movie The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, there has been no shortage of books written about Narnia, but few of them would qualify, in my estimation, as scholarly. Certainly, these books have their place, and I'm sure many readers are grateful for the help they have received. But Planet Narnia portended to go deeper, beyond the fluff and quickly recognizable "lessons" that can be learned by the books. (Not that we don't need to be "hit over the head" with the obvious once in awhile.)

Don't let Ward's "deepness" intimidate you, though. As should be obvious to anyone who has ever read any of my articles, I am a person of not much more than average intelligence, yet I was able to follow the book very adequately. I do admit that some of the literary references were a bit over my head, and Ward's vocabulary is much more advanced than my own. But I was not more lost than I imagine an American motorist touring in Paris would be-the words on the street signs might be difficult, but the International symbols would be enough to give direction. He paints a vivid enough picture that you can figure out the "foreign" words-especially if you have a good dictionary handy. Armand M. Nichol put it this way in his endorsement of the book (from the back of the dust jacket):

"Michael Ward presents an absorbing learned analysis of C. S. Lewis's best-selling and beloved series, The Chronicles of Narnia. Readily accessible to the average reader, Ward's book reads so much like a detective story that it's difficult to put down."

I had exactly that experience when I read the book. Having recently re-read the Chronicles myself, my reaction on page after page was "Yes. I see. I understand exactly what you mean. That makes so much sense."

The other reason that the book intrigued me is that it included a part of Lewis's life we do not hear much about. There have been books after books written about C. S. Lewis's Christianity, but little about his great love of poetry and medieval literature. The book centers around Lewis's fascination with the medieval concept of the Heavens. His poetry is filled with the Seven Planets, and his science fiction space trilogy (especially the last book, That Hideous Strength) is filled with medieval Planet imagery. How Lewis imaginatively integrated this love for the medieval cosmic understanding with his Christian beliefs is nothing short of amazing. It gives me a sense of what a genius he really was.

Planet Narnia could prove to be the most important book thus far ever written on the Chronicles of Narnia. All the other books I know of are commentaries, attempts to enlarge upon religious and moral questions, allegorical interpretations, and so forth. But Ward has managed to discover for us more of the mind of Lewis himself which illumines the very foundation of the stories and becomes a necessary ingredient in all our subsequent considerations of the Chronicles.
His discovery reminds me of Lewis's explanation of the relationship of the "Grand Miracle" and all the other miracles (Miracles, pp. 173f in the recent Harper Collins edition). Ward's thesis is the "missing part of the work" which illuminates all the parts, and thus a proper understanding of the parts (the seven stories) requires a reference to the "missing part" (Lewis's "donegality"). While previous attempts to introduce people to the Chronicles will continue to maintain their particular value, to a certain degree they are now obsolete. Everyone else who writes on Narnia will have to refer to Ward's book. It is a sun by which we now see everything else in the world of Narnia.
This is a scholarly, not a popular work. As others have noted, you may need to keep a dictionary handy. But if you are a mature reader and love Narnia you will love this book!
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Rev. Beckmann, Moderator, C. S. Lewis Soc. of Chattanooga, TN

Planet Narnia is, in a word, brilliant. His use of Lewis' poety, of The Discarded Image, the Ransom trilogy, and Lewis' own literary criticism to illuminate the Narniad was beautifully done. He even found some external evidence in the letters and earlier drafts which is important. It had the feel of a very competent source-critical scholar of the quest for the historical Jesus school. He even had to make up his own word (though not in German) to describe his theory. He anticipated and answered all of my initial objections.

I think I'd call myself almost convinced. Lewis' own cautionary advice in his address to the divinity students ("Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism") makes me still reticent to wholeheartedly buy in. Given his space limitations, Ward understandably does not give much time to considering possible counter-examples in the texts. I'd like to see a competent scholarly attempt at refuting his thesis. But I would be rooting for Ward to prevail.

That said, I don't think that this book should be given to undergraduates generally speaking. They should be given The Discarded Image, the Ransom trilogy, the poetry, to be sure. But this book should wait until they have lived with the Narniad as part of their mental landscape for some time. If given too early, it could stunt rather than enrich their reading. Instead of allowing the "Donegality" to work on them (as Lewis intended if Ward is correct), they would be distracted by looking for instances of it. The Narniad should first be Enjoyed, preferably starting in early childhood, before it is Contemplated in this way.

Similarly, the Narnia movies should most definitely be forbidden to children lest the special effects of the moviemakers art quite replace the richer but necessarily less detailed images that Lewis himself invokes.

Incidentally, this book also had a pleasant and entirely non-literary effect on me. The effort when reading it to mentally inhabit the medieval cosmos that Lewis loved so much made me much more aware of the planets in the night sky. From earth they are just as lovely now as they were when men believed them to be gods or angels dancing through the heavens rather than dead rocks hurtling through the frozen emptiness of space.

Hold the phone: this is simply one of the greatest literary discoveries of our time, and it cannot fail to resound for decades and forever alter how Lewis is regarded in the literary world and beyond. That Michael Ward has somehow found this Holy Grail of Lewis scholarship is very hard to believe -- until one reads the book. Planet Narnia is a triumph and a cause for great celebration, not least because after fifty years, very few people still held out hope that this so-called "imaginative key" to Lewis's Narnia books ever existed in the first place. But it does exist, it does exist -- and here it is, for all to see. Well done, good and faithful scholar!

This thorough work demonstrates clearly and convincingly the truly cohesive quality of the Narniad and shows how Christ is revealed in the "atmosphere" of each work in a way that is far from superficial or simple. This book is best read after one has read (and reread) the Chronicles as well as the space trilogy. Ward has "stumbled" upon the key that links Lewis's theological principles to his imaginative outlook.

I read the Chronicles as a boy, or most of them at least ... I could never get past the opening chapters of The Magician's Nephew. While I liked the stories a great deal, the Christian symbolism sailed right over my head until I re-read all seven of them (with greater enjoyment and understanding) as a young man and convert.

Now Michael Ward has made a convincing case for yet another layer of meaning in the Chronicles, showing that Lewis' medieval scholarship was at work as much as his Christian faith and his love of stories. The books were not a result of Lewis going soft in the head or having a bit of a lark, but rather reflect that "everything he believed was present in everything he said."

This is a two-bookmark book -- one for the text and one for the copious endnotes -- but it is as readable as it is scholarly, with some entertaining wordplay along the way, e.g., "Lewis is not Tolkien quickened any more than Tolkien is Lewis prolonged." Planet Narnia explains the Chronicles without explaining them away; in fact I have returned to them with still more appreciation for the stories, their author, and the God whose glory the heavens tell.

Thank you, Michael Ward, for a book I will be recommending for years to come.