In a new article at CanadianChristianity.com, Peter T. Chattaway speaks the much-avoided truth about C.S. Lewis’s wonderland.
This should try the patience of many Christians who celebrate The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as some kind of opposite to Harry Potter and other fantasy stories.
Too bad. Peter’s right. The Chronicles of Narnia are full of references to pagan mythology.
I believe PTC has has misapprehended the significance of the pagan allusions in Narnia. Of course, I should probably be putting this comment on HIS blog. Nevertheless…Lewis, as a medieval/Renaissance scholar was familiar with such works as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, which are also riddled with pagan allusions. Any of those three authors would have been surprised, and possibly insulted, at the idea that their use of pagan mythology as source material for fantasy or metaphor made their work any less sincerely Christian. Lewis scholars have written about this kind of thing in-depth…did you (and Peter) do your research?
Yes. You should post this at my blog. 🙂
The Lamott comments really disturbed me. Here I was ready to purchase Plan B, and I had to go read that. Um, Lamott’s officially on hold for me.
So let me guess … as a Will Ferrell fan and a Pixar fan, you’re hoping for a double-bill of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Cars?
Altman’s new film may not rank among “his best or worst,” as GreenCine puts it, but I hear it’s the early favorite to take the top prize in Berlin. Make of that what you will.
Re: Lamott
I got some really good things out of Bird by Bird but then gave up on Lamott after getting only a little way into her parenting memoir, Operating Instructions. What kind of self-imposed schizophrenia does it take to condone abortion but then wax lyrical about the essential, somatic joys of pregnancy?
Jeff,
Thanks for the link to the Clooney article. He is high on my list of, “Don’t usually agree with him, still highly respect him.”
I, for one, am glad that his Christian roots still hold a seed in him, even if it is in the form of Catholic guilt. And I pray that the seed will grow…
And I love that, even though well off, he still thinks of his country and society, and does something about it. I’m not upset to hear him swear when talking about the war. I’ve only heard President Bush get riled enough to use foul language when talking about a reporter that disagreed with him. Is it really such a bad trait to getting pissed knowing that there are people out there killing Americans?
I am glad that I live in a country with the loud mouthed George Clooney disagreeing with my government. America is great because it had room for Adams AND Jefferson; because it doesn’t require monolithic agreement on all things political.
And I would much rather have a room full of art-minded Clooneys than one Michael Moore…
-Sean