What is it about?
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe often provokes allegorical interpretations, and my paper argues against the common perception that C. S. Lewis would have disliked these interpretations or found them illegitimate. My paper reviews Lewis's thought on allegory, and demonstrates how he understood that mythic stories would inevitably be apprehended in allegorical ways.
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Why is it important?
My paper offers a counterpoint to what I see as a highly problematic consensus, and one that refuses to understood what allegory is, properly speaking, and what C. S. Lewis in particular thought about the subject; this essay enters into Lewis scholarship just as allegory studies are coming to a place of prominence in literary criticism.
Perspectives
Out of all the conversations I've had about allegory with colleagues, university students, conference attendees, and friends, well over half of them have mentioned Lewis and his fiction. In light of this fact, I am delighted that I have finally articulated my perspective in a formal way, on an issue that is clearly of interest to many, naysayers and enthusiasts alike. I hope readers of all stripes will understand allegory a little better, a term so pervasively misunderstood.
Richard Bergen
University of British Columbia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: Mere Allegory or More Allegory?, Journal of Inklings Studies, April 2019, Edinburgh University Press,
DOI: 10.3366/ink.2019.0026.
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