cs lewis 2

[dwdean]

just finished "out of the silent planet," now getting into "perelandra."
between the two, lewis writes that "all the human characters in this book are purely fictitious and none of them is allegorical."

what do you make of this?
we all know lewis to use allegory in most all of his writings. in the above quote, is he merely being cheeky?

[kasie]

I don't think anyone as dignified as Lewis could be suspected of being cheeky! Bear in mind that quite early in his career he wrote a book called The Allegory of Love in which he defines 'allegory' at some length. It's a while since I read it and as I remember, it's very erudite, so I'm not able to give you a precis of his definition but I seem to remember he talks about 'personification of abstractions', at least in the early stages of his description of Mediaeval Romances. I wonder if he was thinking of his own definitions of allegory when he made this comment about his SF novels? I can't think you can call a character 'Ransom' without it having some sort of secondary meaning.

[ddrosdick97]

Can anyone tell me some of the best cs lewis books? I've only read Narnia but I want to read more.

[jeremiah.f]

He's not being cheeky: the (human) characters in his space trilogy are fully realized personalities, not mere stand-ins for an attribute or quality, or "the typical Christian/atheist/Englishman," so they are not allegorical. That's not to say that there aren't symbolic meanings (for example, kasie's point about Ransom's name), or that Lewis isn't trying, say, to portray materialistic progressivism in the character of Weston. In allegory, though, the narrative and the characters are secondary to The Message Of The Book. So while Weston is a materialistic progressive, we read him as a person, a character, and not simply as a representative of Materialistic Progressivism. By contrast, Mr. Woldly Wiseman in Pilgrim's Progress is not a fully realized character; we just read him as a representative of the sort of temptations worldly wisdom puts before the pilgrim on his Christian journey.

That said, I think the distinction between fiction and allegory is a sliding scale, not a binary switch, and Lewis is closer to allegory than most. I think the Narnia books might actually qualify as allegory, despite Lewis's strenuous objection. Aslan is Jesus and the Witch Witch is Satan and Peter is the Virtuous Man and Susan is Eve and Edmund is Fallen Man and Lucy is the Innocent Child. That's ok with me. I don't love them any less for it.

ddrosdick, Lewis's best novel by his own account and by that of his critics is his last: Till We Have Faces. It's a beautiful book (and, IMO, the least allegorical and yet still most deeply moving of all his fiction). I'd also recommend The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity as entrees into Lewis's nonfiction.

[WICKES]

Can anyone tell me some of the best cs lewis books? I've only read Narnia but I want to read more.

He wrote a great historical novel called Till We Have Faces (I think!). Lewis is an interesting writer, though often ignored today because of his almost fundamentalist Christianity. There is much more to him than that though. He was a brilliant Oxford academic who read a dozen or so languages and was nicknamed "the best read man in England" by a fellow professor at Oxford (or Cambridge, where he also taught), and he draws upon this vast learning in his fiction, which is what makes him so fascinating. He also writes beautifully.

[Clopin]

Susan is Eve

How is Susan Eve?