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04-10-2007, 12:32 PM
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#1 |
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Lady of Letters
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Either Oxford or Kent, England
Posts: 2,476
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Influences on Narnia
One of the reasons I've always loved the Chronicles of Narnia is that they feel a bit like composites of the best things in literature, as if Lewis took bits he loved from other works and used them to enrich his stories. A particular example struck me when I was reading the Prose Edda for the first time (maybe you all know this, but it was new to me): after Ragnarok, when Baldr and some of the other gods return to the earth, they find the playing-pieces of the Æsir in the grass at Valhalla and talk about the past. Lewis 'borrows' this when the children in Prince Caspian find the chess pieces!
I found that exciting  . As I'm reading Ivanhoe at the moment I've been thinking that the medievalism of Prince Caspian owes a lot to this kind of 19th century historical fiction about the Middle Ages - especially in the combat between Peter and Miraz. Perhaps Tennyson and the Pre-Raphaelites were influences too, as well as the almost certain influence of Malory's Morte d'Arthur? Any thoughts?Anyway, I'd be interested to know if anyone has spotted parallels with Narnia in other books (including the Bible  ) which Lewis might have read, especially from those of you more well-versed in George MacDonald or E. Nesbit than I am...How about later works which were influenced by Narnia, too?
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And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. Last edited by sun-star : 04-10-2007 at 12:55 PM. |
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04-10-2007, 07:12 PM
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#2 |
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Elf Lord
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: here and there
Posts: 3,514
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Kinda hard to argue against how you put it Sunstar - but i'm not overly sure you actually convince with the examples given ...
'Could do better' is my assesment. BB x |
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04-11-2007, 09:14 AM
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#3 | |
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Lady of Letters
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Either Oxford or Kent, England
Posts: 2,476
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Quote:
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And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. |
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04-24-2007, 01:06 PM
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#4 | |
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Elf Lord
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Ilha Formosa
Posts: 2,068
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Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep. Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them? "I like pigs. Dogs look up to us, cats look down on us, but pigs treat us as equals."- Winston Churchill |
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04-24-2007, 01:19 PM
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#5 |
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Lady of Letters
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Either Oxford or Kent, England
Posts: 2,476
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Oh, I'm sure the originals would have been his first port of call
but to me, Narnian medievalism resembles the heightened, colourful Victorian recreations of medieval chivalry as much as it does Malory or other ME romances. I can't really substantiate that opinion though In my first post, I forgot to mention one of my favourite medieval romance-type moments in Narnia - Caspian's wife, like the queen in Sir Orfeo who's stolen by the fairies, dies after she makes the mistake of sitting under a tree in the middle of the day. Always a bad idea
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And all the time the waves, the waves, the waves Chase, intersect and flatten on the sand As they have done for centuries, as they will For centuries to come, when not a soul Is left to picnic on the blazing rocks, When England is not England, when mankind Has blown himself to pieces. Still the sea, Consolingly disastrous, will return While the strange starfish, hugely magnified, Waits in the jewelled basin of a pool. |
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08-30-2008, 04:16 PM
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#6 | |
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Princess of the Noldor (and Administrative Empress of the Lone Islands)
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Imladris (and sometimes Norway)
Posts: 3,304
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I like how he pinpoints the time to events not from history, but from fiction
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 Signature picture art - Bard the Bowman - by vigshane Avatar art - Footsteps of Spring (a young Luthien) - by Henning Janssen |
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