Wednesday, July 08, 2009

The geography of allegory ...

... C.S. Lewis and the angel & devil on your shoulder. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

I have read most of C.S. Lewis's works and - if I do say so myself - am better informed theologically than most of my contemporaries (and certainly most of those younger than I), having studied theology for four years (I was interested in it, too, and did well). My feeling is that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is a better work of apologetics than Mere Christianity (itself a far less interesting book than The Abolition of Man), precisely because it is an allegory.

6 comments:

  1. Well, yeah ... but I think the "Screwtape Letters" is more fun!

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  2. The Screwtape Letters is a masterpiece, principally because of the insight it provides into how the human psyche works.

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  3. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien (fiction and nonfiction) ought to be required reading for all children, teens, adults, and geriatric codgers (myself included in the latter group). On need not be conversant in theology to know that those two Brits had something profound and useful to say, and we ought to listen to them, and we ought to applaud the creative clarity and sense of wonder that comes through in almost every one of their works.

    Well, with that having been said (and with time on my hands), I might as well dig out my NARNIA books and spend some time with a master storyteller. And then it is on to SCREWTAPE (with its searing ironies) and perhaps some of his slender but wonder-filled volumes of nonfiction.

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  4. I'm not a Lewis fan in general. I think you're right, though, Frank, in you assessment. Lewis' non-fiction writing is often so drearily pedantic (with one or two exceptions), not to mention not really all that logical, that his fictional allegories get his messages across quite a bit better.

    I far prefer Charles Williams. A much deeper thinker, and a deeper Christian thinker, IMHO.

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  5. Yes, Art, Charles Williams deserves to far better known than he is.

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  6. Yes, Art, Charles Williams deserves to far better known than he is.

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