by Devin Brown
In both his book and in his essay here on cslewis.com, Michael Ward lists me as someone who holds a different position than he does on the mixture of images Lewis uses in The Chronicles of Narnia, and so I am happy to have been invited to present another point of view. Dr. Ward is correct in placing me in the “approval” category among those who do not see a problem with the combination of characters, events, and symbols Lewis chooses.
Planet Narnia by Michael Ward is in many ways the kind of book C. S. Lewis himself would have liked. It has a lovely tone, serious and winsome at the same time. It is one of the best researched books on Lewis—in print or out. It has generated the kind of “hammer and tongs” discussion that Lewis and his friends delighted in. Finally, it is written with a clarity that in my opinion rivals Lewis’s own. It is a book Lewis fans everywhere will enjoy regardless of whether in the end they are convinced by Dr. Ward’s argument that Lewis based the seven Chronicles of Narnia on the seven heavens.
I enjoyed it, but remain unconvinced. Here are three reasons why.
First, the planet-related imagery does not stay rooted in its “home” book, but appears scattered randomly in all seven Chronicles. Because of this random scattering, it is impossible for me to believe that Lewis consciously planned for each book to be associated with a distinct planet. If this was Lewis’s goal, then he fell far short of achieving it because for every aspect that fits Ward’s scheme, we can find one that does not. Consider the following two assignments of book to planet:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – Mars. Mars is famously the god of war and this is a war story, a war to drive out an evil tyrant and her forces. In a prominent meeting with Father Christmas, Peter, Susan, and Lucy are armed with sword and shield, bow and arrows, and dagger and to repair the wounds of war—healing cordial. Peter’s first combat occurs in a moving scene that is one of the turning points of the story and one he will refer to in the next story as well, and afterwards he is made a knight. Aslan has a special meeting with Peter to outline “two plans of battle,” the only such meeting in the Chronicles. After killing Aslan, the Witch cries to her army, “Now! Follow me all and we will set about what remains of this war!” As Susan and Lucy approach the final battle, they hear “a noise of shouts and shrieks and of the clashing of metal against metal.” Then Aslan leads all the “war-like creatures” into the fight: dwarfs with their battle axes, dogs with teeth, the Giant with his club, unicorns with their horns, centaurs with swords and hoofs.
Afterwards Edmund, too, is knighted, and we hear the stirring account of how he fought his way through three ogres and brought his sword smashing down on the Witch’s wand. Lewis tells us that the first actions of the newly-crowned monarchs are to seek out and destroy the remnants of the Witch’s army.
Prince Caspian – Jupiter. Jupiter was the planet of kingship, and this story is about what it means to be “a true king of Narnia” and the clash between Caspian’s destiny as the rightful king and Miraz’s unlawful attempt to reign in his place. The adventure begins with a blow on Susan’s magic horn which calls the High King of Narnia and his siblings out of the far past. At their first meeting Trumpkin tells the children, “I’m a messenger of King Caspian’s. Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, and long may he reign!” Then he must add, “That is to say, he ought to be King of Narnia and we hope he will be. At present he is only King of us Old Narnians.” In his letter to Miraz, Peter asserts his own position as “High King over all Kings in Narnia” and further distinguishes between Caspian who is the “lawful king” and Miraz who is merely “styling himself” as king.
After the usurper to the throne has been vanquished, Aslan asks Caspian, “Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?” When Caspian correctly notes his feelings of insufficiency, Aslan pronounces, “Under us and under the High King, you shall be King of Narnia.”
Based on these aspects, it is easy to see which book is the war book and was based on Mars and which book is the king book and was based on Jupiter. All well and good except that in both his book and his essay, Dr. Ward assigns these books their planets in the exact opposite way—an easy thing to do given the great mix of planet imagery we find in them.
If the first problem with Dr. Ward’s thesis is the random assortment of planet images that appear in each book, the second problem is that his claim to have discovered the “secret, governing imaginative scheme underlying the Narnia Chronicles” does not pass what I call the “So What?” test. Would knowing that, as Dr. Ward claims, there are some Mars images in one book, some Mercury images in another, and some Jupiter images in a third significantly change the way respond to Lewis’s stories or change what they mean to us? For me the answers are no and no.
In the opening words to The Narnia Code, the recent BBC documentary focusing on Planet Narnia, the narrator suggests that without the Planet Narnia thesis, the Chronicles of Narnia can be viewed as “a case of bad writing” and “a random collection of odd characters and events with no rhyme or reason or literary sense.” From my perspective, the Narnia stories do not need the Planet Narnia premise to transform them from bad writing into good. For me, and I think for millions of other readers, there has always been plenty of rhyme, reason, and literary sense in these classic tales. I do not share Dr. Ward’s opinion that without his theory the seven stories have no unifying theme.
A third problem with the Planet Narnia premise is that it misrepresents the story-making process. Dr. Ward asks: “Why does the Christ-like figure of Aslan enter the story among dancing trees in Prince Caspian? Why does he fly in a sunbeam in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader? Why is he mistaken for two lions in The Horse and His Boy? Why does he not appear in Narnia at all in The Silver Chair?”
Dr. Ward would have us believe that on each of these occasions, Lewis did not simply ask what would be the best element for the story but instead asked, “What can I do here that will fit with this book’s planet?”
Why does Father Christmas appear in the first book? I believe the reason Lewis included Father Christmas was because this was the best way for him to convey what he wanted to convey. According to the Planet Narnia thesis, Lewis includes Father Christmas because his jovial character can be associated with Jupiter.
In his essay “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism,” Lewis complains about a kind of literary criticism that attempts “to reconstruct the genesis of the texts it studies,” to find out “with what purpose” an author wrote and “under what influences.” He observes, “Every week a clever undergraduate, every quarter a dull American don, discovers for the first time what some Shakespearian play really meant.” Lewis notes how this type of criticism is always done with immense erudition and great ingenuity and how at first sight may seem very convincing.
Lewis then goes on to comment, “I have watched reviewers reconstructing the genesis of my own books in just this way” and concludes “not one of these guesses has on any one point been right.” Someday we will have a chance to ask Lewis if Michael Ward has been the one exception to his rule, and both sides can enjoy a good laugh at who was right and who was wrong, recognizing that when all is said and done it matters very little.
In a recent interview, Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham stated, “A very nice man and a friend of mine, Michael Ward, has recently written and published a book all about how the Narnian Chronicles are all based on the seven planets of the medieval astronomical system. I like Michael enormously, but I think his book is nonsense.” Gresham further suggested, “People do go out of their way to try to find all kinds of hidden meanings. We seem to be a species that loves conspiracy theories.” Paul Ford, one of the world’s great Narnia scholars, has called the theory “earnest but implausible.”
As more people have a chance to carefully examine the arguments put forward in Planet Narnia, and this is something I heartily recommend, it will be interesting to see whether more of them will agree with Douglas Gresham and Paul Ford or with Michael Ward. This forum presents a great way for those on both sides of the debate to present their opinions and for each side to learn something new from this exchange of ideas.
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Devin Brown is a Lilly Scholar and Professor of English at Asbury College, where, among other duties, he teaches a class on Lewis. He is the author of Inside Narnia: A Guide to Exploring The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Baker 2005) and Inside Prince Caspian: A Guide to Exploring the Return to Narnia (Baker 2008). He is currently working on Inside the Voyage to the Dawn Treader to be released in fall 2010 in advance of the third film.
5.13.2009
Planet Narnia Spin, Spun Out
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39 comments:
I thank Dr Brown for his article. Although I believe he is mistaken in his conclusions, I must say it is good for the argument of 'Planet Narnia' to be met with resistance because it may help sharpen some of the points at issue. Most Lewis scholars who have publicly commented on 'Planet Narnia' to date (Walter Hooper, Alan Jacobs, Jerry Root, Wayne Martindale, Sarah Arthur, Derek Brewer, Simon Barrington-Ward, Andrew Cuneo, etc) are so convinced by its arguments that they have not tried to find fault with it.
Although there isn't space here to interact with Dr Brown's whole article, I would like to comment on his quoting of Douglas Gresham's opinion. When I visited Douglas at his home in Malta last summer to discuss his view of 'Planet Narnia' (the view quoted by Dr Brown in support of his own position) he told me that he hadn't actually read the book. He also described himself to me as 'no Lewis expert'.
Although Gresham's scepticism about people who love 'hidden meanings' is in general a sound attitude and one which I share, it can't tell us anything about the rights and wrongs of 'Planet Narnia' unless the evidence that the book marshals is actually read and assessed on its own merits, - a task which Douglas has not yet undertaken.
Also, it is worth bearing in mind that the people he describes who love "hidden meanings" are not necessarily all fools, even if most of them are fools. Indeed, these people who love hidden meanings include C.S. Lewis himself, who once wrote an essay entitled 'The Kappa Element in Romance'. Kappa is the initial letter of the Greek word meaning 'cryptic' or 'hidden'. The Kappa Element in Romance was Lewis's discussion of the hidden element in story, which he valued highly. Given his interest in and love for the cryptic, we ought not to be surprised that there is a hidden dimension to Narnia.
Finally, in this connection, we might also look a little more closely at the occasions when Lewis pre-emptively pooh-poohs attempts to discern hidden meanings in his own stories, as he does in the article on Biblical criticism cited by Dr Brown. Is this not what a man with a secret might be likely to say in order to throw people off the scent? George Sayer, who knew Lewis for thirty years, wrote that 'Jack never ceased to be secretive.' Sayer also records how once, when walking out in the countryside, Lewis deliberately misled a fox-hunt. "He cupped his hands and shouted to the first riders: 'Hallo, yoicks, gone that way,' and pointed to the direction opposite to the one the fox had taken. The whole hunt followed his directions."
Thanks, Dr. Brown, for this much-needed counterpoint to Michael Ward's rather far-fetched hypothesis. When I first read Ward's summary of his ideas on this blog, I immediately thought of that passage in "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism"; it's funny to think that Lewis pre-emptively wrote the definitive rebuttal of Planet Narnia half a century before it was published.
In response to Dr. Brown's invitation for other Lewis scholars to respond to the thesis of Planet Narnia and Dr. Brown's objections I hereby state my agreement with Dr. Brown. My comments, beyond that however, are too detailed to post in a blog comment. Therefore I have chosen to comment more extensively in my own blog at http://willvaus.blogspot.com. I look forward to the continuing discussion on this topic.
I am no Lewis scholar, so I feel somewhat sheepish giving my opinion here. While I've read nearly everything Lewis has written, I am not even close to an expert and as a high school student I can only stand in awe having read the opinions of such men as Mr. Ward, Mr. Vaus, and Mr. Brown. That being said, I have to give my opinion on this subject, however faulty it may be!
I read Planet Narnia nearly a year ago. I found it to be fascinating, thought provoking, insightful...I did not come away convinced however. I will not say I'm an extreme skeptic; but I believe there is as much room for doubt in the mind of the readers as there is room in favor of Mr. Ward's case. As I was reading the book, I was engrossed. When I first put it down, though, I was torn between "is this nonsense" or "is this brilliant"? After I had had time to ponder the book more, though, I came to a conclusion--yes, it was brilliant. There is no doubt of that. It also is NOT nonsense. Mr. Ward argues a clear, articulate case for his point. That alone gives me great respect for both him, his book, and his theory.
That being said...I had to also wonder...how many other books could we run the planetary aspects through and find equally startling resemblances? How many ways could this fit a different series, a book, a film, or any work of art? I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to have tried that yet--perhaps someone will!
So I cannot wholly embrace this theory. But the real truth is, we don't really know. How can we, without Lewis here to answer our questions?
Yet there is no denying that Planet Narnia has been a wonderful contribution to theories on Narnia and Lewis. This is a book worth reading. It is worth thinking about, because it does present us with a claim that we can neither refute or agree with (in my opinion--of course many have tried to both refute and agree with it!). We can't know for sure, which is what makes it so wonderful. It is like trying to figure out who Shakespeare really was--we have endless theories. If we are educated on all of them, we are bound to learn something--although we may not know the answer to that something this side of heaven.
In An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis writes about critics, "If he is a profound thinker himself, what he acclaims and expounds as his author's philosophy may be well worth reading, even if it is in reality his own." I don't know what Lewis would say about the points raised in Planet Narnia if he were alive today and read it. I do believe he'd read it, and have an opinion--and I also believe that Mr. Ward should be very proud, because I believe that Lewis would have been able to say that Mr. Ward indeed is a profound thinker and his philosophy "worth reading."
Dr. Brown –
I have just finished reading your thoughts on Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia theory.
I, like you, have met Michael Ward - though not in such a way as he would remember me – and I found him likeable, sincere, and blessedly free of the ego which so often attends academics of his ability and attainments. I should also acknowledge, as a matter of simple fairness, that he is vastly more educated than I, and probably a good deal more clever, so I venture to disagree with him – or rather, to question him, for I have no business debating him - with great trepidation.
Mr. Ward is a superb literary craftsman. Few academics – or anyone else for that matter – write expository prose with such impressive felicity. His theory is fascinating. It is exciting. It is bracing. It is meticulously researched and annotated. It is ingenious. What troubles me is its complexity. It does not have the kind of austerity or economy that, to me, makes a theory compelling.
Thus: If I want to explain the presence of a ball I find in the street, I can say a) two children were playing catch in a nearby yard and accidently threw their ball over the fence, or b) two children were playing catch in a yard miles away and accidently threw their ball over the fence, a rat came along and began to nibble on the ball, a hawk plunged from the sky at that moment with the intention of nibbling on the rat, and as they rose into the sky the rat released the ball, causing it to land miles from the yard whence it came. Both explanations fit the facts, but the complexity of the second, despite the fact that it’s a better story, does not compel my belief as does the simplicity and common sense of the first. Of course, the fact that Planet Narnia does not suit my taste for argument doesn’t make it wrong.
I also hesitate to believe the Planet Narnia theory because of what I have learned from Lewis himself:
Remember this if you ever become a critic: say what the work is like, but if you start explaining how it came to be like that (in other words, inventing the history of the composition) you will nearly always be wrong. Collected Letters, Vol. 3, p. 1009
I now think that all that sort of historiography which reconstructs the story of a book’s composition, is sheer illusion. I’ve seen it done too often on books of my friends or my own, and it has never once been right. That’s why I would never listen to any scholar who tells me how P. Plowman or F.[aerie] Q.[ueene] was written. Collected Letters, Vol. 3, p. 1344
Reviewers of [Tolkien’s] books and mine, both friendly and hostile, constantly put forward imaginary histories of their composition. I do not think any one of these has ever borne the slightest resemblance to the real history. Collected Letters, Vol. 3, p. 1459
However…
If you sometimes read into my books what I did not know I had put there, neither of us need be surprised, for greater readers have doubtless done the same for far greater authors. Shakespeare would, I suspect, read with astonishment what Goethe, Coleridge, Bradley, and Wilson Knight have found in him! Perhaps a book ought to have more meaning than the author intends? But then the writer will not necessarily be the best person with whom to discuss them. Collected Letters, Vol. 3, p. 1116
This thought, I suspect, may come closer to the truth; I think Mr. Ward may be on to something, in a way, but I would look to the seven heavens for an unconscious or gradually evolving influence rather than premeditated intent. Regardless of who is right, I will remain thankful that Lewis was once among us,and continue to be enriched by his legacy.
It is said that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but if you wager with your head and not your heart, that’s how you bet. You and Dr. Ford are probably right. Michael Ward is probably wrong. I’ll bet with you, but my heart’s with him. Planet Narnia is a work of breathtaking scholarship. It is a grand story, grandly told, and though I must side with you, I’d like Mr. Ward to be right.
I am not comfortable with Mr. Ward’s method for defending his book. When he encounters evidence that doesn’t fit his thesis, he talks about Lewis being secretive and enjoying deception. This makes Ward's premise unfalsifiable: if the evidence fits, so much the better. If it doesn’t fit, then Mr. Ward changes the subject to Lewis enjoying deception, wanting to throw us off the scent, etc.
Lewis’s reference to the “Kappa Element” in stories is not about hidden symbolism or conscious deception; it is about the atmosphere created by a story. And Lewis misled the fox hunters presumably because he sided with the natural over the human, not because he enjoyed deception for its own sake.
Lewis was "secretive" about his personal life, but he was candid and obliging in answering questions about his literary methods. In his letters, even to children, he openly discussed his starting points for stories, his literary sources, and his themes-- including his outline of the whole Narnia series according to its underlying Christian worldview.
I recently saw a review by Suzanne Bray in Seven: An Anglo-American Review in which she notes that most people who know medievalism well and the Narnia stories well won’t be able to guess which planetary influences Ward has assigned to which books. "The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader'” is set on the ocean, and Prince Caspian falls in love at the end. Surely this book should be associated with Venus. "The Horse and His Boy" is set in the scorching desert, and Aslan appears and glows in a swirling golden radiance. Surely this book should be associated with the Sun. In "The Silver Chair" we meet the saturnine (gloomy) Puddleglum and the sleeping giant, Father Time, was actually called Saturn in an early draft of the story. Surely, this story should be associated with Saturn. But all of these guesses, according to Mr. Ward, are incorrect. He finds ingenious reasons for a whole other set of associations, including evidence such as that Edmund loses his “torch” (flashlight) at the end of "Prince Caspian", and the Turkish word for the planet Mars happens to be torch. (What evidence is there that Lewis knew Turkish, beyond the word Aslan, which he said he found in a copy of "The Arabian Nights"?)
I recall Mr. Ward saying that he had tried previously to correlate the seven Narnia books with the seven days of the week and with seven major Shakespeare plays. So one has to wonder if the ingenuity behind the “Narnia Code” is that of Mr. Ward, not of C. S. Lewis. Nonetheless, Planet Narnia is a learned and well-organized book, well worth reading even if you don’t find its central thesis convincing.
I applaud your article, Dr. Brown, as a good attempt, but I disagree with your conclusions. The most glaring problem is how you define the traits of Mars. Today we most associate Mars with war, but as Ward points out, the medieval concept is much broader and includes associations with plant life. Prince Caspian is definitely the book most associated with the flora of Narnia.
Nice try, though. It makes for good discussion.
Hello Mark,
Thanks for joining the conversation. As always, it's good to hear from you.
You are certainly correct that there is more to Mars than war. You would agree, I think, that these other aspects of Mars can be found in other books, if we want to look for them--which was my point.
For example, you wrote, "Prince Caspian is definitely the book most associated with the flora of Narnia."
This is one possible opinion. It is certainly a valid opinion. But Lewis also focuses heavily on the Narnian flora in LWW, so someone else could just as validly assert their opinion that "LWW is definitely the book most associated with the flora of Narnia."
Dr. Ward--who has always been very straight forward about the strengths and weakness of his argument--was the first to point out that these elements of the planets do not stay rooted in their home book, and has tried to address this problem. On pages 232 and 233 of Planet Narnia, he has a very clear four-part section titled "Why Is the Scheme Not More Perfect?"
Among other defenses he claims, "Lewis was unlikely to have been perfectly successful in carrying out his own plan ... To err is human. Almost all artistic designs will involve certain small flaws, gaps, paddings , and unintended by-products" (233).
I urge everyone to read Dr. Ward's entire book. Some readers, I am sure, will be convinced by his "to err is human" solution to this problem.
Some--like me--will not be convinced. As I wrote in my essay because of this random scattering, it is impossible for me to believe that Lewis consciously planned for each book to be associated with a distinct planet. If this was Lewis’s goal, then he fell far short of achieving it because for every aspect that fits Ward’s scheme, we can find one that does not.
Readers will have to decide if they think Lewis would have been more successful had this been his plan. I think he would have been.
What do other people think?
I do notice, Dr. Brown, that you are not as dismissive of Dr. Ward's theory as you seemed to be when it first came out. I applaud you for that.
I guess my question is that if you knew about the other aspects about mars, why did you only talk about the war aspects? That is not exactly fair, is it?
I realize that an author has to pick and choose when writing a short article, so perhaps I am being a bit unfair myself. Do you have any plans on writing a book on this subject? For some reason you seem to believe that it is important enough to address it in a number of articles and interviews. I would certainly buy such a volume.
By the way, I have been following your essay on Racism and Sexism in the Chronicles that NarniaWeb.com has been publishing in installment. Very well done. I would love to see this published in a book someday, also.
I would just like to politely point out that Mr. Devin Brown got the planets for LWW and PC mixed up. It is Prince Caspian that is Mars, and Lion Witch Wardrobe that is Jupiter....and basing his objections on this simple mistake would seem to argue further in Michael Ward's favor, would it not?
PS: my silly mistake. Dr. Brown's Planet mismatch is purposeful.
I would like to say however that perhaps LWW is the one exception among the books in this whole debate. Perhaps Lewis did not write LWW with this idea of "one planet to a book" in mind, and it only occured to him afterwards. This makes sense because in LWW there are certain elements that are more akin to Wind in the Willows than to the other Narnia books. I cite the Beavers and their home furnishings as evidence, as well as Mr. Tumnus' house.
So, looking back the planet similarities of LWW and PC are indeed similar, and Jupiter/LWW similarities are superficial.
Of course if we're going to say that battles= Mars, then all the books are Mars. But as has been pointed out, Mars was not always/only the god of war.
However, with the other books I think the planetary similarities are very efficient. I haven't even read Mr. Ward's book, and already I am making the connections. The Silver Chair is Luna: owls, "silver," insanity in the object of the chair (the moon is the patron saint of lunatics) and the struggle with/against mere logic in the witch's underground house.
PPS: I don't want to beat a dead horse, but this issue has really gotten hold of me.
Upon further reflection, I think Dr. Brown's objections are unique to only The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian.
He asserts that one can apply what is in LWW to PC, and vice versa, and to all the other books. And that is true enough to some extent, and perhaps in the case of his example even proper enough (Prince Caspian is subtitled "The Return to Narnia").
I am attending Dr. Browns lecture this evening in Mpls MN.
I really do not understand what is to be gained in this conjecture.
I believe he presumes this to be real, true, and genuine, however his concepts are all based on inconclusive grounds.
My concern is that if he draws in complexity into the simple gospel message and leads of one of God’s little ones astray, well Christ indicated clearly that would not be a good thing.
In the opening words to The Narnia Code, the recent BBC documentary focusing on Planet Narnia, the narrator suggests that without the Planet Narnia thesis, the Chronicles of Narnia can be viewed as “a case of bad writing” and “a random collection of odd characters and events with no rhyme or reason or literary sense.” From my perspective, the Narnia stories do not need the Planet Narnia premise to transform them from bad writing into good. For me, and I think for millions of other readers, there has always been plenty of rhyme, reason, and literary sense in these classic tales. I do not share Dr. Ward’s opinion that without his theory the seven stories have no unifying theme.
Amen, amen.
I would add: if there were bad writing - it is rather well done writing that somefind bad taste, not differring therein from HGG or LotR or indeed SW, HP ST - it would remain bad, even if Planet Narnia would have given us the clue of what good writing CSL attempted but failed. Therefore, any reading which needs no such reference for planets or assignments for one planet per book (I was just guessing after Jove, Mars, Sun, and was surprised to see HHB as Mercury and MN as Venus rather than opposite) is preferrable.
Aslan=Christ is such a theme, confirmed by author himself. Three books deal with great events, namely creation, sacrifice and redemption, return afterworld has been corrupted in last days) the four remaining are more individually and politically moralising. That Lucy sees Aslan more often than others is a reference to prophets and seers, Lucy being beside the name of the goddaughter (not just any acquaintance!) also of Lucy of Fatima apparitions, later sister Lucy (still alive when Narnia was written).
I think planets in Narnia, like horoscopes in the paper, are best left unnoticed. At least for general reading purposes. And parts of VDD are about exactly that. Leave the occult alone.
But as LotR has by now no doubt been abused for English teachers' innumerable digressions on environment, racism, and so forth, from now the HP fans will also have a "occult and technical angle" while abusing Narnia for digressions into occultism.
I am a fan of HP if H=Hypatia and author=GKC, but not when H=Harry and author=Rowling.
One may add, however, that astrology is freely used by Centaurs and by Dr Cornelius. In PC there is a conjunction between "Tarva and Alambil" which reads like Venus and Mars to me.
That CSL sometimes used planets or their conjunctions as props for imagination, is no impossibility.
But if there are conjunctios they are far more than seven (each of the seven times each of the other six divided by two), and so main theme would rather be each story than each astrological entity.
PPS:
Is Michael Ward maybe a fan of Death, Time, Nature et c "incarnations of immortality" by Pierce Anthony? That is a series overtly written the way Ward says Narnia series was covertly written.
If Michael Ward's thesis is wrong, Devin Brown's cross planetary symbolism is the key to proving it. But he does not prove it in this article with such brief examples. The very weight--the shear amount--of Ward's evidence of planetary connections in the books is the major proof which no critic has yet worked hard enough to address. The nearest attack is the one made by Brown: that there are images from different planets in all the books. Ward has said as much. He also notes that some images overlap between planets. He does not find this crossing of images among the books a proof against his thesis. Nor do I. This is because Ward offers image after image, connection after connection to show that a single planet dominates in each book. There's only one way to disprove that: to write as full a study as Ward himself with as many proofs to indicate, to use Dr. Brown's example as an example, that there are as many (or near to or more) Mars connections in Wardrobe as there are Jove connections. If this can be done with any one of the Narnia books, it would be a start toward saying that, though Lewis used planetary imagery in Narnia, Ward's thesis about the centrality of this imagery--a single planet governing a single Narnia book and this being the hidden, controlling "code" of the series--is wrong. One or two examples, however, will not be enough. I think Dr. Ward is right. To persuade me otherwise (I can't speak for Michael), someone will have to write a study as full as evidence as any of Ward's chapters showing that the imagery, symbols and atmosphere of a planet can be assigned to a different book than in Ward's schema. And then, if this hard working scholar can do it twice (seven times, of course, would be more conclusive), only then will someone have produced a strong enough argument to question Ward's thesis and argue that the planetary references are random, not deliberate, read into the text by Ward, or perhaps placed there unintentionally by Lewis.
There are two problems with thesis:
a) it claims to DIS-cover something the author is claimed to have COVERED
b) it claims to do so in a way that is contradicted by the material, as in single planet for each book contradicted by:
- Jove material in Prince Caspian as in question of true royalty, justice
- Mars material in Lion, Witch, Wardrobe (sword, battles, reference to Crucifixion - the "cruel carpentry" in CSL's own overtly Planetary work)
- Mercury material in Magician's Nephew (magician, magic rings, first appearance of witch Jadis, greedy reaction of uncle Andrew!)
- Venus material in Horse and His Boy (Rabadash's unhappy love or infatuation, the eventually happy couples of Cor and Aravis, Hwin and Bree, Aravis' claiming to sacrifice to a goddess invoked before marriages, the sheer amount of cats, questions of getting along, as between the escapes, as between Cor and Corin, as between Aravis and Lazaraleen ... or of not doing so, as Susan vs Rabadash, Aravis vs Ahoshta)
And of course, Queen Susan as a very Venus type of woman (Lucy being more ... CSL may have thought of Minerva)
The possible conjunctions between two planets:
Moon - Venus
Moon - Mercury
Moon - Sun
Moon - Mars
Moon - Jove
Moon - Saturn
Venus - Mercury
which seem to be both HHB and MN
Venus - Sun
Venus - Mars
Venus - Jove
Venus - Saturn
Mercury - Sun
Mercury - Mars
Mercury - Jove
Mercury - Saturn
Sun - Mars
Sun - Jove
Sun - Saturn
Mars - Jove
which seem to be both LWW and PC
Mars - Saturn
Jove - Saturn
which seem to be both LWW and LB
Thanks, Charlie, for your insightful comments. I welcome you to the conversation.
I wonder if to disprove Dr. Ward's hypothesis, one need be as thorough as you suggest in your proposal and how high the percentage of images from the "wrong" planets would need to be.
For example, what if someone followed your plan and counted up all the images in LWW and assigned 20 % of them to Jupiter, 19% to Mars, 15% to Venus, and 10% to the Moon, and found the rest were unrelated to any planet. 1) Would this prove or disprove Ward's premise for you? 2) How high would the percentage need to be to convince you that there was an intentional plan by Lewis to focus on just one planet? (For me it would have to be much higher than I find it to be.) and 3) If a single book does not seem to have a single planet associated with it, is this enough to disprove the claim? 4) If one person says, PC is the Jupiter book and someone else says PC is the Mars book, and each supplies lots and lots of examples to support their claim--wouldn't this be evidence that Lewis did not intend to make PC focus on any single planet?
Finally, I wonder what you are implying in your statement: "One or two examples, however, will not be enough." I agree that one or two examples are not enough, which is why in the four short paragraphs from my article copied below, I provide several dozen separate examples of planetary imagery that, according to Dr. Ward's premise, are in the wrong book:
FROM MY ARTICLE: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – Mars. Mars is famously the god of war and this is a war story, a war to drive out an evil tyrant and her forces. In a prominent meeting with Father Christmas, Peter, Susan, and Lucy are armed with sword and shield, bow and arrows, and dagger and to repair the wounds of war—healing cordial. Peter’s first combat occurs in a moving scene that is one of the turning points of the story and one he will refer to in the next story as well, and afterwards he is made a knight. Aslan has a special meeting with Peter to outline “two plans of battle,” the only such meeting in the Chronicles. After killing Aslan, the Witch cries to her army, “Now! Follow me all and we will set about what remains of this war!” As Susan and Lucy approach the final battle, they hear “a noise of shouts and shrieks and of the clashing of metal against metal.” Then Aslan leads all the “war-like creatures” into the fight: dwarfs with their battle axes, dogs with teeth, the Giant with his club, unicorns with their horns, centaurs with swords and hoofs.
Afterwards Edmund, too, is knighted, and we hear the stirring account of how he fought his way through three ogres and brought his sword smashing down on the Witch’s wand. Lewis tells us that the first actions of the newly-crowned monarchs are to seek out and destroy the remnants of the Witch’s army.
Prince Caspian – Jupiter. Jupiter was the planet of kingship, and this story is about what it means to be “a true king of Narnia” and the clash between Caspian’s destiny as the rightful king and Miraz’s unlawful attempt to reign in his place. The adventure begins with a blow on Susan’s magic horn which calls the High King of Narnia and his siblings out of the far past. At their first meeting Trumpkin tells the children, “I’m a messenger of King Caspian’s. Caspian the Tenth, King of Narnia, and long may he reign!” Then he must add, “That is to say, he ought to be King of Narnia and we hope he will be. At present he is only King of us Old Narnians.” In his letter to Miraz, Peter asserts his own position as “High King over all Kings in Narnia” and further distinguishes between Caspian who is the “lawful king” and Miraz who is merely “styling himself” as king.
After the usurper to the throne has been vanquished, Aslan asks Caspian, “Do you feel yourself sufficient to take up the Kingship of Narnia?” When Caspian correctly notes his feelings of insufficiency, Aslan pronounces, “Under us and under the High King, you shall be King of Narnia.”
By "one or two examples" I meant one or two thematic examples.
I whole-heartedly agree that Narnia stands brightly on its own! Dr. Ward conveys the same thing in Planet Narnia, both explicitly and in his evident love of the Chronicles. If the atmospheric 'Kappa element' is really present, its main value can’t be in its discovery. I have no trouble at all with the supposed 'mish-mash’; all Lewis' writing is affectionately itself, and really good. In its borrowing, it merely shares perfect doors to literature he enjoyed so well himself.
As to the 'So What?' test though, Planet Narnia passes for me. If it’s for real, it makes these books even better. Lewis understood the wonder in medieval cosmology, and in the significance of the ancient cultural planetary archetypes. In some of the most valuable literature, rich symbols like these are simultaneously 'incarnate' in expressible allusions and 'discarnate' in their permeating imagery or flavour, the alchemy of memorable uniqueness and 'place'. A single symbol is at the heart, anchoring together the words and feeling, essence and understanding.
The chronicle best illuminated thus for me is The Silver Chair. Lewis captures the essence of the lunar divide: that longing, aching break between the fallen mundane world and the perfect eternal one that influences it, where Aslan deeply is, and yet is not heard. So resonant and real. We Remember, remember the signs, in a terrain that accumulates subtly and clearly among the other elements of the story (even without Dr. Ward's observation). Still, the crafting is strong enough that its discovery does not weaken it. Rather, it heightens the intended sense. Standing at the top of Aslan's cliff is so intricately allusive, yet so idiosyncratic and brilliant in tone and flavour, that there is much to enjoy in catching the spheres in that book. There’s enjoyment in catching the sheer skill of making this happen.
Regarding the truth of the theory, I'm entirely convinced. It will not be the whole story, but it fits. If it feels imposed, go back to Lewis himself and read The Discarded Image in particular; Surprised by Joy, the Ransom Trilogy, etc. You can’t get the sense of Lewis' mindset from the purely modern ‘pop-astrology’ perspective. When you get it, you stumble right back into the Narnia you already knew... Which is the point :)
The other important thing is that it can’t be denied that there is some sort of planetary influence throughout the Chronicles, beyond any reasonable coincidence, and even any undesigned inclusion of the myths. The main flaw in this cross-planetary argument against Planet Narnia (especially when you mention percentages) is that it's basically quantitative, while the whole point is quality. Be careful in applying the sort of strict allegory that we all agree is foreign to Lewis.
Stuck-on labels like 'Jove=king', 'Jove=jollification', 'Mars=war', 'Mars=courage', and all of that, are restrictive; they also make it obvious that thematic conjunctions must naturally exist. What counts is the whole and essential quality.
Lewis knew what makes a good story, which comes singularly to define for us a part of life we know intimately- held in a picture we've never seen before. That light comes focused through the filter of the whole-story, and that is what we're meant to be looking at. It's supported both by the time-tested archetypes that Dr. Ward points out, and by a deeply sensitive understanding of how imagery creates a whole underlying reality.
In this illumination, we also become more sensitive to the subtle split-light of the Chronicles. Each one is particular and different, but that texture represents a rich and real substance of a majestic unified Aslan.
In the end, the books are too beautiful to argue on for more than a moment. I suggest that we all just sit down somewhere sunny and quiet, and read them again instead... :)
Greetings,
I have a question for the webmaster/admin here at booksbycslewis.blogspot.com.
Can I use some of the information from this post right above if I give a link back to your site?
Thanks,
William
Sure, William. Just reference us. Thanks.
I hope to be able to comment on this in greater detail at some later stage, but time constraints will just allow me to brieflty state:
I bought Ward's book with curiosity. It is erudite from one point of view (Ward seems to know his medievalism), but rather than being the sort of book of criticism that opens up and enriches the work I found it excessively pedantic, dry, in fact one huge list of a book structured in such a way that it presents one supposed correspondence after another until the reader becomes tired. We are rarely told, or perhaps even expected to care, what such a hidden scheme adds to the work (only what it adds to the weight of evidence in support of Ward being right). There seems to be something slick and underhand about the whole approach Ward takes, too. He starts off by falsely claiming that many have found some kind of unity lacking in the Chronicles. Just stop right there, if you please, Mr Ward. I know of very few people who feel there is a lack of unity to the whole (it is a Chronicle of an invented world, from its genesis to its apocalypse and beyond - if that is not unity enough for you, try to the spiritual message that unifies the whole).
If Ward is to have his way, the Chronicles come across as frequently sloppy writing and haphazard planning, unless one grasps the hidden scheme. So they work, then, only for people who belong to the inner ring of medieval scholars, who are able to read between the lines and to sift out the covert references to the planets. We need someone like Dr Brown to play the Puddleglum role and to put an end to this moony enchantment of Mr Ward's. The Lewis I have met through all his words and works would not have entertained such a reductive approach to storytelling nor to criticism.
If one reads the books Dr Brown or Paul Ford have written on Narnia, they enrich the experience of reading the books. The findings of these authors compliment each other and leave space for other authors, they acknowledge that the stories work from multiple perspectives, that they have all kinds of richness and varied ideas behind them, which one can either examine in more detail or reject just as one likes. While they acknowledge the depth and the detail, they put the joy of Lewis's tale to the fore and nowhere suggest that any one particular fact is essential to enjoying or understanding the Chronicles. Ward's thesis is narrow and reductive, and can be falsified by anyone with a modicum of common sense just as Dr Brown has done. There is no hidden scheme to Narnia at all, and of course Ward will fight like a lion from his corner because he has put all his critical eggs in one basket. If the basket turns out to have holes in it, there will be no point in anyone reading Michael Ward on Narnia at all. Keep fighting, Dr Ward.
Jon,
I agree with the heart of your comment, defending the essence and atmosphere of story so intricately woven in the Chronicles from pedantic or fact-based, deconstructive stripping-down. I think this is the vital point in this whole discussion, and one that Michael Ward looks at a lot through the book as he discusses the significance of an idea like this.
If his theory seems sensationalist or parasitic, I'd attribute that more to the way people esteem C. S. Lewis and clasp at anything new in his writing- and this is in that sense a big find- than to Michael's approach to scholarship or to the literature itself. His reading is considered and insightful, but also deeply appreciative. He speaks often of atmosphere, of the sense of a place, and he seems very aware that this new way of looking at the Chronicles does not replace the more essential things at the centre; rather, in its place at the periphery of understanding these books, this is a fascinating mythological/poetic understanding to wander. It seems that he loved Narnia on its own terms before these thoughts were given him, and that these terms continue to form the basis for all he fills them with. Whether or not the theory is true, many of his comments on Lewis and Lewis scholarship are incredibly insightful and good.
As someone who has read a little of Lewis and a little medieval cosmology, enough to love and be indebted to both, this book opened delight for me in the Chronicles. Not for what they are made to be merely by some planetary code, but in fact by the deeper unification of all the simple, essential goodness that already comes right through. I think that Michael Ward defends Lewis here against the charge of disunity without actually feeling it himself- opening in an abundance of images and connections the things we had felt all along. That's the whole point of a hidden scheme, for Lewis, I think (apart from the fun of it): that it presents the unknowing reader with a handful of kitestrings that could be chased almost infinitely through literature, but are really enjoyed here in simple form. Michael Ward's task, not as a storyteller here, is different. He recognises that the enjoyment and poetry only get deeper the further you unravel them, and begins to open the doors for which Lewis' ornate key set was designed. He doesn't explore all those paths, but leads us to their starting places well. Perhaps he could have focused less on the literal and more on the lyrical in this, but that might have made the work impossibly long to read... And I do believe it would have been more possible, yet only if we'd been a readership who didn't need the theory tirelessly proven to us in the first place :)
I'd suggest looking again at the book and finding one or two supposed inspirations from old literature of Lewis' work... Then finding those texts themselves and just enjoying them. Then the list might be a handy one for real enjoyment, for you. A lot has gone into exploring it, and it would be foolish to ignore it altogether.
I hope I find this thread still active so long after the original post. My view aligns strongly with those of Mark and Charlie above; the test of Ward's hypothesis is independent concurrence. In his notes Ward cites at least one case in which someone exposed to his thesis identified a planetary correspondence that had eluded him: namely that Marcury is ruler of Virgo and the mercurian chronicle (HHB) includes two instances of challenged virginity.
I first encountered Ward's thesis in a television broadcast devoted to his book. It left the planetary identities of HHB, MN and LB as exercises to the viewer which I (and, I suspect, many others) found trivial. That HHB has a plot resting on the bearing of a message made it obviously mercurial. The fertile birth of Narnia was obviously cytherean when combined with (in the temptation of Digory) interpolation of Aphrodite's triumph in Judgement of Paris.
When I wondered what further evidence there was for the end of Narnia to belong to the Bringer of Old Age, I immediately recalled Poggin the Dwarf relating how Ginger the Cat had terrorized the good beasts by telling of Aslan "swallowing up the wicked king".
I therefore read the chapter of Ward's book devoted to LB keenly anticipating the invocation of Cronos devouring his children and was more disappointed to find that Ward had missed it, than I was proud of having seen it myself.
Even at the time of watching the television broadcast, it was clear to me that, had I seen the planetary associations for myself, I would have found the later books easier than the early ones. In my opinion Ward was only able to start from the beginning and work forward because of the depth of his familiarity with Lewis's other writings. The general reader, working solely on basis of general cultural literacy, only stands a chance of discerning a planetary scheme by starting from the end and working backwards. I therefore think that it is much easier to muddy the waters by citations to LWW and PC (written while Lewis was still getting into his stride) than with the succeeding chronicles.
Indeed, if Ward is correct, I can imagine Lewis making the specific planetary imagery progressively more obvious as he realised that uncovering the scheme was not as easy for his readers as he had anticipated.
A little above: and found the rest were unrelated to any planet - would that be even possible? Would not Speculum Naturale by Vincent of Beauvais have related each extant and maybe some non-extant things to planets?
We are rarely told, or perhaps even expected to care, what such a hidden scheme adds to the work - Being a prop for the author's imagination while writing? That was about what I found anything like believable about the thesis.
They could also have been guidelines for decisions of taste. In any composition, of music or history, there is a sense of unity, and of what details fit and what details do not fit the scheme.
As for taking cues, obviously it was not just from astrology of seven planets.
One can certainly say that Eustace, both as a convert and as part time sold in slavery, mirrors his Holy Patron, St Eustace (though he was a hunter and generous before his conversion).
St Clarence, by the way, was bishop of Vienne, where the council against the Templars was held.
And to make coments number 34, guess what number it is in the condemnations from year 1277, laetare sunday, Étienne Tempier bishop of Paris, where he condemns the heresy that God could not have created Narnia?
Merry Christmas!
Hello there. I think something that needs to be looked at is that the 'seven books' of Tolkien's LOTR + the Hobbit fit planetary symbolism much more closely than the Narnia books! Don't deny this until you consider it for yourself, as detailed down the page here: http://www.planet-tolkien.com/board/751/3787/0/planet-narnia
I think there are two options: either the Inklings did these types of things on purpose, or the Planet Narnia thing is rendered somewhat meaningless, as the nearest available thing to conpare and contrast it with (like a scientific experiment)has shown a closer planetary correlation than Narnia itself! Ooops!
The proposition of Michael Ward is precisely that CSL did this on purpose.
If Tolkien did as well, that would rather strengthen the position.
However, Hobbit=sun, right?
But all the chapters under earth, the water is rather moon symbolism - like Silver Chair.
This sounds a lot like a new "the Bible code" to me
This sounds a lot like a new "the Bible code" to me
This sounds a lot like a new "the Bible code" to me. If the same pattern can be found in Tolkiens books I would say it is lessens the likelihood of Lewis writing each book for a specific planet. And the so what comment still stands. Lewis wrote each book for a specific planet. So what? How on earth would that add to or change our view of the universe or God or whatever? As the BBC documentary and to some degree ward seem to imply?
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