Planet Narnia

Back from university some time in 2009, my dad told me about a programme he had recorded from the television called ‘The Narnia Code’ (BBC, April 2009), where an academic had come up with a theory explaining the coherence of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series. We watched it together and I thought the premise intriguing. Michael Ward, a Lewis scholar, was reading Lewis’s poem ‘The Planets’ as part of his research when he was struck by the line in reference to Jupiter: ‘winter passed/And guilt forgiven’. He realised this was the premise of the story of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and began linking the rest of the books in the series to planets in the pre-Copernican constellation: Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus and Saturn.

I was interested by this theory and emailed a Lewis specialist friend from my time in Lille, France, who sent me a review she had done of his book Planet Narnia (2008). The main argument against it was, she said, that even academics who are familiar with the medieval view of the planets had difficulty connecting them to the books in the way that Ward does.

Summer 2009. I am at Greenbelt festival (see this post) and notice that Michael Ward is going to do a talk about Planet Narnia. Interested, I decide to go along. Unfortunately in 50-odd minutes there’s not much he can say that I haven’t already heard in the BBC documentary, although he does go into a little more ‘academic’ detail than would presumably have been appropriate for television. The bookshop stock the book but at its hardback price I decide against it.

A few weeks ago I was in Sheffield city centre library in the literature section and wondered whether I would stumble across Planet Narnia; it had been in the back of my mind to read for a few months. There it was, and five minutes later I was reading it on the train home for a day. I spent most of that weekend reading when I could, and some evenings while doing a placement in a Sheffield secondary school. It definitely makes interesting reading, if you are at all familiar with Lewis. For me the main problem was the frequent references made to Lewis’s ‘Ransom’ trilogy (another for the ‘to read’ list), but I could follow the main point of what is being said. It did feel as though more time was given to this series than to the Narnia books themselves at times. Ward’s thesis goes further than just linking the books to planets, however; he is trying to prove that Lewis was attempting to make his readers Enjoy the planets rather than Contemplating them. (The difference between Enjoy and Contemplate is the difference between the French connaître and savoir – the first is knowledge gained by experiencing it rather than observing and knowing in the mind) He calls this ‘donegality’; the process of understanding the characters of the planets through reading books which are written in the ‘spirit’ of that planet. I’ve explained that badly.

In conclusion, if you are a Narnia enthusiast and have a bit of concentration (although it’s not written in the highest scholarly style there are some presumptions made about the level of academic knowledge of the reader) it’s well worth a read. Then it’s up to you as to whether you are convinced by Ward’s thesis; personally I’m still on the fence.