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

As seen on *BBC Knowledge* 22/3/10.

For over half a century, scholars have laboured to show that C. S. Lewis's famed but apparently disorganised*Chronicles of Narnia*have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser's*Faerie Queene.*None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the structure of Narnia's symbolism has remained a mystery.  
  
Michael Ward has finally solved the enigma. In*Planet Narnia*he demonstrates that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. Drawing on the whole range of Lewis's writings (including previously unpublished drafts of the*Chronicles),*Ward reveals how the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets - - Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn - - planets which Lewis described as "spiritual symbols of permanent value" and "especially worthwhile in our own generation". Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the*Chronicles*so that in each book the plot-line, the ornamental details, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. The cosmological theme of each Chronicle is what Lewis called 'the kappa element in romance', the atmospheric essence of a story, everywhere present but nowhere explicit. The reader inhabits this atmosphere and thus imaginatively gains*connaître*knowledge of the spiritual character which the tale was created to embody.  
  
*Planet Narnia*is a ground-breaking study that will provoke a major revaluation not only of the*Chronicles,*but of Lewis's whole literary and theological outlook. Ward uncovers a much subtler writer and thinker than has previously been recognized, whose central interests were hiddenness, immanence, and knowledge by acquaintance.Read less