natural feeling by violating the garden.
As a metaphor, the garden in
The Magician’s Nephew
has less in common with Eden than it does with the walled gardens that appear in the medieval courtly romances that Lewis wrote about in
The Allegory of Love,
his first great scholarly work, published in 1936. He came to Oxford from Belfast when he was in his late teens, and apart from a stint in the army during World War I, he never really left it.
The Allegory of Love,
an examination of the evolution of the form of allegory from the epics of late antiquity to the chivalric poems of the Middle Ages, made his academic reputation. It was in medieval literature, more than in scripture, that Lewis’s imagination lived and breathed. As arcane as its subject might seem to contemporary readers, for Lewis
The Allegory of Love
was an extension of his childhood enthusiasm for “knights in armor,” an enthusiasm that lasted all his life, beginning with the creaky historical novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and threading through the Arthurian works of Tennyson, Thomas Malory, William Morris, and Edmund Spenser.
Lewis adhered to a very particular, almost technical definition of allegory, so when critics later called
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
allegorical (or, for that matter, suggested that
The Lord of the Rings
was an allegory for World War II), he took great pains to correct their error. He had a point — only someone who has a pretty feeble grasp of allegory would mistake
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
for one. Some of the book’s elements are
symbolic,
but that is not the same thing. None of the characters in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
are given labels like Despair or Prudence, nor can they be simply equated with such abstractions, like the figures in a strict allegory, such as John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress.
Still, the mistake is understandable. Why would most modern readers know anything much about allegory? Today the form is usually derided, rarely read, and never practiced, unless you count the allegories in political cartoons, where a gluttonous hog might appear with the letters “IRS” stamped on its side.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
is probably the only true allegory contemporary readers have ever heard of, let alone read. As a result, our ability to recognize allegories and to appreciate the best of them has withered away.
Nevertheless, Lewis was a medievalist at heart, and if none of the Narnia books are actual allegories, they are infused with a related affinity for emblems, pageants, and layered symbolism. This was the way his imagination worked, by constructing a series of meaning-drenched images. Lewis didn’t deny that
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
was allegory because he disliked the form (as Tolkien claimed to); to the contrary, he thought allegory was unjustly disdained. He believed modern readers required training to read it properly. If they could learn, at least temporarily, to think like the medievals, they would finally grasp allegory’s distinctive, if anti-quated beauty. Then it might give as much pleasure to the average educated reader as it had given to him.
One of the allegories Lewis most admired was
The Romance of the Rose,
a thirteenth-century French poem begun but not finished by Guillaume de Lorris and completed (to Lewis’s mind in an inferior fashion) by Jean de Meun. The story concerns a young courtier engaged in the delicate process of winning a lady’s love (symbolized by the rose of the title) in accordance with the elaborate protocols of chivalry. His opponents in this quest include figures named Shame and Fear; his chief ally is called Bialacoil, a term, Lewis explains, that is not quite the same as the chivalric principle of courtesy, but fairly similar.
If you check the entry for
The Romance of the Rose
in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
you will be told that the lover’s personified enemies stand for the “personal and social
As a metaphor, the garden in
The Magician’s Nephew
has less in common with Eden than it does with the walled gardens that appear in the medieval courtly romances that Lewis wrote about in
The Allegory of Love,
his first great scholarly work, published in 1936. He came to Oxford from Belfast when he was in his late teens, and apart from a stint in the army during World War I, he never really left it.
The Allegory of Love,
an examination of the evolution of the form of allegory from the epics of late antiquity to the chivalric poems of the Middle Ages, made his academic reputation. It was in medieval literature, more than in scripture, that Lewis’s imagination lived and breathed. As arcane as its subject might seem to contemporary readers, for Lewis
The Allegory of Love
was an extension of his childhood enthusiasm for “knights in armor,” an enthusiasm that lasted all his life, beginning with the creaky historical novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and threading through the Arthurian works of Tennyson, Thomas Malory, William Morris, and Edmund Spenser.
Lewis adhered to a very particular, almost technical definition of allegory, so when critics later called
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
allegorical (or, for that matter, suggested that
The Lord of the Rings
was an allegory for World War II), he took great pains to correct their error. He had a point — only someone who has a pretty feeble grasp of allegory would mistake
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
for one. Some of the book’s elements are
symbolic,
but that is not the same thing. None of the characters in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
are given labels like Despair or Prudence, nor can they be simply equated with such abstractions, like the figures in a strict allegory, such as John Bunyan’s
Pilgrim’s Progress.
Still, the mistake is understandable. Why would most modern readers know anything much about allegory? Today the form is usually derided, rarely read, and never practiced, unless you count the allegories in political cartoons, where a gluttonous hog might appear with the letters “IRS” stamped on its side.
The Pilgrim’s Progress
is probably the only true allegory contemporary readers have ever heard of, let alone read. As a result, our ability to recognize allegories and to appreciate the best of them has withered away.
Nevertheless, Lewis was a medievalist at heart, and if none of the Narnia books are actual allegories, they are infused with a related affinity for emblems, pageants, and layered symbolism. This was the way his imagination worked, by constructing a series of meaning-drenched images. Lewis didn’t deny that
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
was allegory because he disliked the form (as Tolkien claimed to); to the contrary, he thought allegory was unjustly disdained. He believed modern readers required training to read it properly. If they could learn, at least temporarily, to think like the medievals, they would finally grasp allegory’s distinctive, if anti-quated beauty. Then it might give as much pleasure to the average educated reader as it had given to him.
One of the allegories Lewis most admired was
The Romance of the Rose,
a thirteenth-century French poem begun but not finished by Guillaume de Lorris and completed (to Lewis’s mind in an inferior fashion) by Jean de Meun. The story concerns a young courtier engaged in the delicate process of winning a lady’s love (symbolized by the rose of the title) in accordance with the elaborate protocols of chivalry. His opponents in this quest include figures named Shame and Fear; his chief ally is called Bialacoil, a term, Lewis explains, that is not quite the same as the chivalric principle of courtesy, but fairly similar.
If you check the entry for
The Romance of the Rose
in
The Norton Anthology of English Literature,
you will be told that the lover’s personified enemies stand for the “personal and social
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