The Chronicles of Transformation is a seven-course feast for the soul

Which is your favorite Narnia book? If you need help deciding, or if you already love all of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia and want to love them more, pick up The Chronicles of Transformation. This unique book, edited by Leonard J. DeLorenzo, brings together seven scholars, a poet, and a visual artist to bestow a Narnian banquet for our nourishment and delight.

One of the most intriguing threads running through this volume is the question, “What type of story was Lewis writing in his Chronicles?” Many assume that Lewis was writing allegories intended to teach Christian doctrine, but the scholars in this volume think otherwise.

In his chapter on The Voyage of the “Dawn Treader”, Peter J. Schakel argues that, at least by the time of that book (the third in the Chronicles), Lewis was writing “high myth.” This needs explanation. Voyage ends with a solemnly beautiful scene: after sailing through a sea of lilies and watching their friend Reepicheep leave the confines of the world, the Pevensie children encounter a lamb, who cooks fish on the seashore and invites them to breakfast, then reveals himself as Aslan.

Some might criticize that final scene for being too heavy-handed with its Christian symbols, too allegorical. Schakel says this scene is an example of myth, but myth with heavy Christian symbolism in it. Though one could dismiss this as a distinction without a difference, Schakel makes a good point that shows both Lewis’s brilliance and his wonder at the glorious strangeness of Christianity.

Lewis himself said he was not writing allegory, but “supposing”: “Suppose there were a Narnian world, and it, like ours, needed redemption. What kind of incarnation and Passion might Christ be supposed to undergo there?” (Lewis, quoted by David W. Fagerberg in the introduction to The Chronicles of Transformation.) In other words, Aslan is not an allegorical symbol for Christ—he actually is the same Person. The story is a myth because it’s about this Person doing things He never actually did, although they are the kinds of things He would do. It’s not allegory in the sense of a symbolic retelling of events that did really happen.

Still, the same Person will tend to do at least some things the same way again. Suppose Our Lord said, “That time I had breakfast with Peter and John by the Sea of Tiberias was wonderful. I’ll do something like that again.” He could. Would we accuse Him of being heavy-handed and obvious? (Why are Christians often so opposed to overt Christian symbolism in fiction anyway?)

Rebekah Lamb points out that The Silver Chair really is about education, but not because it’s an extended allegory of the Christian life. Instead, it’s Lewis supposing that two children badly in need of a good education receive it from Aslan. Education here does not simply mean learning facts, although repetition and memorization play a role in the story (Aslan gives the children four signs they must repeat daily and remember on their quest); it means being drawn out of one’s natural muddle-headedness and becoming a mature human person with an appreciation of the right things.

Jill and Eustace’s encounter with Aslan corrects the mis-education of “Experiment House” (Lewis’s satirized modernist school where children experiment instead of being taught) and gives them a true education, which does not just teach their brains, but transforms their souls. Going back to Schakel, reading Narnia can help educate us in a similar way, forming us to appreciate the good and true: the powerful mythic and Christian elements of the stories can “appeal directly to the emotions and imagination” without being tethered to specific Gospel passages or Christian doctrines (pp. 128-129).

Last but not least, Fr. Michael Ward’s chapter on Prince Caspian does groundbreaking work showing what sort of story Lewis was writing here—at least, for those of us who haven’t yet read Ward’s prior scholarship on Narnia.

Prince Caspian doesn’t seem to be anyone’s favorite Narnia book; the “theme” (a term Lewis used to mean the unique flavor or feeling of a story, beyond the events of the plot) is harder to grasp in this one than the others. But Ward, drawing on his 2008 book Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis, exposes the Martial—literally “Mars-related” but, by extension, “warlike”—theme of Prince Caspian.

At a surface level, the book’s plot is about war: the four Pevensie children join Prince Caspian to fight the oppressors of Narnia and set Caspian on his throne. But Ward shows that it is also about the virtues required to fight a just war, particularly courage and humility. Lucy must be brave enough to follow Aslan, even when no one else can see him. Caspian must be humble enough to allow Peter to fight for him.

Going further, Ward points out that the book also contains a “sylvan” or forest motif, starting with the woods the Pevensie children find themselves in upon entering Narnia. Mars was the Greco-Roman god of war, but also of the forest! For anyone who finds the more overt Christian symbolism of the other novels excessive, Ward shows that Lewis was also capable of an amazing subtlety.

There are many other excellent points in all the essays in this volume, ranging beyond the question of “Allegory or not?” There are also beautiful illustrations by Stephen Barany and a poem by Madeline Infantine at the beginning of each chapter, so that this book is not simply a collection of analyses of the Narnia books, nor even an appreciation of Narnia, but a work of art in itself.

The poetry, art, and scholarship quicken in the mind, not simply nostalgia and desire to read the Narnia books again (though they certainly do that), but also contemplation of the mysteries of the Christian Faith that formed Lewis. In short, this book succeeds in doing what it sets out to do, which DeLorenzo sums up thus: “I hope that [this volume] leads you to greater enjoyment, first in the Chronicles of Narnia, and then, ultimately, in that wider, grander, lovelier place to which we are all being drawn.”

The Chronicles of Transformation: A Spiritual Journey with C. S. Lewis
Edited by Leonard J. DeLorenzo
Ignatius Press, 2022
Paperback, 253 pages