Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Selection © Michelle Ann Abate & Lance Weldy 2012 Editorial matter © Lance Weldy 2012 Introduction and individual chapters (in order) © Lance Weldy; Rachel Towns; Melody Green; Keith Dorwick; Nanette Norris; Joseph Michael Sommers; Rhonda Brock-Servais & Matthew B. Prickett; Aaron Clayton; Gili Bar-Hillel; Jennifer Taylor; Susana Rodriguez. All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identifi ed as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–0–230–30124–5 hardback ISBN 978–0–230–30125–2 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Printed in China Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Contents Series Editor’s Preface vii Preface viii Notes on Contributors x Introduction 1 Lance Weldy PART I: TEXT AND CONTEXTS 1 “Turkish Delights and Sardines with Tea”: Food as a Framework for Exploring Nationalism, Gender, and Religion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 15 Rachel Towns 2 Scapegoating and Collective Violence in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe 38 Melody Green PART II: APPLICATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 3 Moving Beyond “All That Rot”: Redeeming Education in The Chronicles of Narnia 53 Keith Dorwick 4 War and the Liminal Space: Situating The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in the Twentieth-Century Narrative of Trauma and Survival 71 Nanette Norris 5 C. S. Lewis’s Manifold Mythopoeics: Toward a Reconsideration of Eschatological Time in the Construction of The Chronicles of Narnia 90 Joseph Michael Sommers v Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 vi Contents PART III: ADAPTATIONS AND MEDIATIONS 6 The Author, the Movie, and the Marketing: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Early Reader Adaptations 113 Rhonda Brock-Servais and Matthew B. Prickett 7 The Lion, the Witch, and the Wii: Lewis’s Theology in the Narnia Video Game 126 Aaron Clayton PART IV: CONFLICTS AND CONTROVERSY 8 Lewis and Anti-Lewis: On the Influence of The Chronicles of Narnia on His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman 145 Gili Bar-Hillel 9 “Beautiful Barbarians”: Anti-Racism in The Horse and His Boy and Other Chronicles of Narnia 161 Jennifer Taylor 10 Boy-Girls and Girl-Beasts: The Gender Paradox in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia 186 Susana Rodriguez Further Reading 199 Index 208 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Introduction Lance Weldy Overview of Narnia It all started with an image of a faun; at least, this is the famous state- ment from C. S. Lewis that has been reprinted in countless essays and scholarship about The Chronicles of Narnia. Specifically, Lewis said: “All of my seven Narnia books, and my three science fiction books, began with seeing pictures in my head. At first they were not a story, just pictures. The Lion all began with a picture of a Faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood.”1 This image of the faun remains one of the most iconic images of the Narnia series and serves as a good starting point for this introduction to The Chronicles of Narnia New Casebook. On one level, I hope that with the mention of the faun, I have already conjured for the reader a positive, almost oneiric mental picture, perhaps one of fanciful nostalgia for feelings of that first encounter with Narnia, be it through the story of Tumnus or Lucy or otherwise. However—and as a somewhat simple illustration regarding the general purpose of this Casebook—I want to consider this image of the faun on another level so that it becomes deconstructed, scru- tinized, problematized. As mentioned by several scholars, including Owen Dudley Edwards, this scene of a young girl walking home with a complete stranger whose own mythological roots trace back to a healthy reputation around sexualization certainly gives one pause. And even though Edwards notes that “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe can only work with an absolute suspension of concerns about sex and paedophilia, since it turns on a faun inviting a little girl to tea while secretly intending to betray her,” he does concede that “fauns in the sense Lewis was employing are companions to Silenus and similar voluptuaries in Rubens paintings or to Comus and damnable entou- rage in Milton masque.”2 In other words, the kinds of characteriza- tions affiliated with fauns in the traditional literary sense were bawdy at best and hedonistic at worst. Additionally, J. R. R. Tolkien famously provided his feedback to Lewis’s Narnia story, specifically concern- ing the faun, as told to Roger Lancelyn Green: “‘I hear you’ve been 1 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 2 Introduction reading Jack’s children’s story. It really won’t do, you know! I mean to say: “Nymphs and their Ways, the Love-Life of a Faun.” Doesn’t he know what he’s talking about?’”3 Of course, Tolkien’s cheeky reference to the kinds of books that could possibly be in Tumnus’s personal library can be interpreted several ways, but Colin Duriez believes the remark means that “Tolkien is more bothered with what he sees as a serious error of taste than he lets on.”4 This “error of taste” could very well refer to Lewis’s incorporating into his children’s book the figure of a faun, whose sensual reputation in artistic and literary history seems at odds with the implied reader of his narrative. And remember, the faun is one of the most iconic images of the whole series. This one small example of the faun symbolizes the complexities of The Chronicles of Narnia and also represents just one of the critical approaches that the scholars in this anthology undertake. True, it might be taking the “fun” out of Narnia, as many of our children’s literature students would say, but, as Peter Hunt notes, “we have to accept that children’s books are complex.” 5 What Hunt means by this is that we have to accept that texts written for children require the same amount of scrutiny as would a text for adults––even more so because of the implicit and explicit ideological influences inherent. Because of this, the essays in this New Casebook seek to extend upon previous schol- arship and explore new ways of critically assessing the Narnia texts. The Chronicles of Narnia series consists of seven fantasy books that were published between 1950 and 1956. The narrative chiefly is set in a secondary world called Narnia, where different children from the primary world of England cross a threshold in various ways (a wardrobe, a painting, etc.) into Narnia to help the good talking animals of Narnia battle evil and restore order. Each time the children enter Narnia, it is because the lion Aslan has called them. Though the publication history of the series conflicts with the internal chro- nology and composition history of the series, it is safe to say that, overall, the series recounts the story of Narnia from its creation in The Magician’s Nephew through to its devastation in The Last Battle. Out of the seven books, the Pevensie children are arguably the best known protagonists, most likely because of their presence in the first published, and most well-known, book of the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, even though they are not present in all seven books. Furthermore, Lucy and Edmund Pevensie are present in the series most often, serving both as protagonists in three novels and in more minor roles in two others, one of which is The Horse and His Boy, which is the only novel in the series where the visiting children are not the protagonists of the story. Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Copyrighted material – 978–0–230–30125–2 Lance Weldy 3 As I mentioned above, the Narnia series becomes complicated when discussing the chronology of the narrative versus its composi- tion and publication, and the ordering of the books for reprints of the series has been quite controversial.