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Religious Book Store > Religious books beginning with P
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Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis |
Author: Michael Ward
Published: 2008-01-15 |
List price: $29.95
Our price: $23.96
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As of: December 03rd, 2008 11:50:50 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Wonderful
One of the most exciting and wonderful works of literary scholarship that I have ever read. It makes Narnia even more pleasurable (when I thought that that was not possible). And it was just as revealing for the space trilogy.
Narnia rediscovered
I read the Chronicles as a boy, or most of them at least ... I could never get past the opening chapters of The Magician's Nephew. While I liked the stories a great deal, the Christian symbolism sailed right over my head until I re-read all seven of them (with greater enjoyment and understanding) as a young man and convert.
Now Michael Ward has made a convincing case for yet another layer of meaning in the Chronicles, showing that Lewis' medieval scholarship was at work as much as his Christian faith and his love of stories. The books were not a result of Lewis going soft in the head or having a bit of a lark, but rather reflect that "everything he believed was present in everything he said."
This is a two-bookmark book -- one for the text and one for the copious endnotes -- but it is as readable as it is scholarly, with some entertaining wordplay along the way, e.g., "Lewis is not Tolkien quickened any more than Tolkien is Lewis prolonged." Planet Narnia explains the Chronicles without explaining them away; in fact I have returned to them with still more appreciation for the stories, their author, and the God whose glory the heavens tell.
Thank you, Michael Ward, for a book I will be recommending for years to come.
Converted Skeptic
Ward has discovered something amazing. Not only is his book authoritative and convincing, but Ward is himself a clear, entertaining writer. Planet Narnia is simply, a good story well told as well as a good point well argued. My highest compliment is that Ward himself write in a format that demonstrates as it unfolds layer by layer to a revelatory conclusion, by Jove!
I thought "Yeah, right" -- until I read it.
A deeper hidden meaning behind Narnia? "Yeah, right."
That's what I thought -- until I read the book.
Actually, that's not quite true either. I thought this only until I read Ward's FAQ on planetnarnia.com. Call me a sucker, but I think I was already hooked by about question 6. By hooked I don't mean I'd already accepted his theory line and sinker, but I knew I had to get me this book.
Book finally in hand, I decided I'd better start reading with my "skeptic's glasses" firmly in place. If I kept them on, I reasoned, and still came out the other end believing Ward's theory, there must be something to it. Well, my glasses came off about half way through Chapter 1.
Even aside from the content, Ward's clear style, his sincere tone, his obvious love as well as deep knowledge of Lewis's work -- all these contribute to making this fairly academic work very readable and (to me) incredibly interesting.
Ward's work opened my eyes to a whole bunch of stuff I'd never noticed in the Chronicles before. Not to mention the Ransom Trilogy and other of Lewis's writings.
One thing I considered a weakness was how Ward mentions that certain groups of words (say "swift" and "run" in HHB) are used very frequently in one particular Chronicle. But often he doesn't state that those words are not used with that frequency in the other Chronicles, so I wondered whether it proved anything.
I mentioned as much to Ward, who wrote me a helpful and prompt response. He said it's about the atmosphere, and the key thing is the words' context, not their number. "Context is everything," he added. And I guess he's right. (In fact, that's probably one of the main themes of the book.)
But to cut a long short -- this book is one of the most exciting non-fiction works I've read in a long time.
The Holy Grail of Lewis Scholarship
Hold the phone: this is simply one of the greatest literary discoveries of our time, and it cannot fail to resound for decades and forever alter how Lewis is regarded in the literary world and beyond. That Michael Ward has somehow found this Holy Grail of Lewis scholarship is very hard to believe -- until one reads the book. Planet Narnia is a triumph and a cause for great celebration, not least because after fifty years, very few people still held out hope that this so-called "imaginative key" to Lewis's Narnia books ever existed in the first place. But it does exist, it does exist -- and here it is, for all to see. Well done, good and faithful scholar!
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