In his classic An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis posited that one of the criteria by which a book might be judged “good” was its ability to hold up and produce new insights under multiple readings. For example, the mystery novel that is never touched again once one knows “whodunnit” is not good literature, while the “old friend” one reads again and again (as Lewis did Jane Austen’s novels, apparently annually) are worthy of attention, regardless of their status as “literature” by other tests. Pepperdine University professor and HogPro pal James Thomas has proven again that the Hogwarts adventures, along with their three ancillary texts, count as “good literature” by this standard, with Rowling Revisited: Return Trips to Harry, Fantastic Beasts, Quidditch, and Beedle the Bard (Zossima, 2010). If you haven’t taken a ramble with this delightful volume, you should, and if you have already, then perhaps a repeat trip to this book is in order before Hollywood destroys, um, I mean, adapts, one of the books covered!
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Well worth the Repeat Business: Dr. James Thomas’s Return Foray to Rowling’s Wizarding World
Jack the Giant Slayer: Someone’s Been Reading My Spenser!
We love fairy tales around here, as I suppose everyone knows. I have an author friend who evaluates people’s personalities based on their favorite fairy tales (hers is Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”; mine is “Cherry the Frog Bride,” in case you are wondering). I have to confess, “Jack and the Beanstalk” has never really been one of my favorites, even in its Appalachian incarnations of “Jack and the Bean Tree” or “Jack and the Giants”; perhaps goofy Jack just always seemed like too much a klutz for my taste. Maybe I just never approved of his kleptomania. But I’ve gained a different perspective, after finally seeing Jack the Giant Slayer (2013). Join me after the jump for more on how Hollywood got some things really right with this one, and how someone did some good reading, particularly from the works of some of my favorite tellers of tales: the immortal Edmund Spenser and his protégé, C.S. Lewis.
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Essays and Articles on the 50th Anniversary of C. S. Lewis’ Death
2013 was the 50th Anniversary of C. S. Lewis’ repose and the occasion merited much public reflection, perhaps especially in light of his death having been on the same day as John Kennedy’s assassination. The peak of the celebration and observances, I think it’s fair to say, was the dedication of a memorial to CSL in Westminster Abbey. Many interesting articles regarding the memorial at Westminster Abbey, as well as Lewis’s enduring legacy in general, can be found at publications such as The Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, and The Daily Beast.Susan Pevensie: Post-Narniad Progressive Super Heroine
If your knickers are still in a twist about Susan Penvensie’s not getting to Aslan’s Country at the end of Last Battle, Read all about what really happened with Susan, the Narnia Queen that dismissed her royal status as childish fancy. In this article we learn how she grew up to outshine her brothers, sister, Eustace, really, even Aslan.
The short course is that Susan becomes the perfect liberal East Coast cause fighter, because, of course, that is what the Great Lion wants for all of us.
The best part? Susan as prophylactic smuggler because it’s the heroic thing to do for college co-eds…
Forgive me for wondering, though, if the author, quite despite herself, didn’t actually portray what did happen to Susan and that this was exactly what C. S. Lewis was pointing to in his lipstick and stockings aside as her spiritual ruin, namely, egotism, power concerns, and worldliness before character.
Unlike this writer, for whom Susan is a wish fulfillment fantasy in retro fan fiction (“How I Would Have Lived the Heroic Way in the Civil Rights Era”), Elizabeth Baird-Hardy understands the death of the oldest and least wise Pevensie sister. Listen to her comments on this subject here.
The curious thing for me, after listening to The Last Battle last week, is how charitable Lewis is to Susan when he was bound or obliged as an artist to make the point that the blindness of the dwarves in that story, literal and nominalist blindness, is a quality in materialist human beings as well. Especially of the young and worldly.
The author of this ‘I Know Susan Better’ piece only confirms Lewis’ point because she neglects the chapters following the few paragraphs about Susan about the true nature of the world.
C. S. Lewis Lecture: Christian Living in a Secular Age
From Patristic Nectar Publications:
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