Greatpilgrim's Full Review: David C. Downing - Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis ...
Around the time that the first Chronicles of Narnia movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe came out a couple years ago, there was a whole flood of tie-in “companion” literature being produced, reprinted, and marketed as Lewis fever apparently swept the book scene. A lot of them were fluffy and brought little originality to the table, but a handful contain lasting elucidation and analysis of this one-of-a-kind series.
On a whim I picked up David C. Downing’s Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles, but my expectations weren’t terribly high. To my great delight, this was a perfectly lovely behind-the-scenes exploration of Lewis’s inspirations and influences when crafting his imaginative world. It doesn’t try to be all things to all men, like many Narnia non-fiction does, but rather focuses on specific spiritual and literary elements that helped to shape the development of the novels.
Its approach is delicately balanced with excellent scholarly research on the one hand and an appealing layman-friendly tone that lends itself to pleasure reading. I cheered to discover Downing has carefully woven a synthesis of ideology and philosophy straight from C.S. Lewis by quoting bits and pieces of his various works and connecting them with illuminating explanation. Into the Wardrobe thus conveys inherent legitimacy and terrific sourcing in a fascinating and never-boring manner.
Don’t be afraid of finding a dry, erudite thesis in these pages – Downing keeps things light, brisk, and readable while hitting some unusual points of discussion in the course of seven chapters. “The Life of C.S. Lewis” gives a brief and poignant summary of his early and later circumstances which would come into play, merging naturally into an amazing journey through the evolution and “Genesis of Narnia,” first with the images and literary inspirations guiding Lewis’s desire to write a fantasy story for children, then a book-by-book tour of their conception and writing. I was greatly moved to read of all the personal joys and sorrows Lewis slipped into the stories, like his early childhood mirrored in The Magician’s Nephew, as well as the real life people he sometimes based characters on (Jill was an actress! Eustace was one side of his early atheistic self, etc.).
Downing then delves into “The Spiritual Vision of the Narnia Chronicles” and its “Moral Psychology” with chapters helpfully divided into subheadings of topics like Aslan as Numinous Being/Creator/Co-Sufferer (these sections were just amazing), Honesty, and Empathy. Specific examples from both the Chronicles and Lewis’s other writings illustrate the various intents that he had for the series and turned out to have more unique content than I expected, insightfully unveiling the intricate workings of spiritual discovery and mysticism which Lewis poured into these seemingly simple children’s stories.
But the last three chapters were my favorites – “Classical and Medieval Elements,” “What’s In a Narnian Name?” and “Lewis’s Literary Artistry.” I haven’t seen these aspects of the Chronicles explored so proficiently as Into the Wardrobe does, making Downing’s comments on the rich literary and nomenclatural influences a welcome breath of luminous air. I was also glad he touched on the critics’ views of Lewis, good and bad, bringing some much-needed scholarly analysis of specific issues like political correctness, racism, sexism, and narrative voice in the Chronicles of Narnia. Last but not least, an appendix briefly defines archaic or referential terms in each chronicle, and an interesting method of endnoting gives the specific sources Downing quoted from in the text (there are no distracting footnotes or numbering in the actual chapters, so you just flip to the end of the book and search by page number if there’s a quote mentioned that you want to track down…I like this system!).
Who should read this book? You’ll get the most out of Into the Wardrobe if you’re an avid fan of the series and want to explore its backstory and gain an appreciation for just how much THOUGHT went into its creation. However, I also thought that people who were not quite so taken as I am by Lewis’s work would actually find this a very interesting and thought-provoking read. It might make you feel differently about stamping the Chronicles as moralistic Victorian allegory to find that Lewis claimed “at first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them” – that the images and other-worldly delights gradually became infused with a desire to envision a whole world of “supposals.” The idea is that Aslan is not an explicit metaphor for Jesus but rather a what-if…what if the Father sent a Son to a whole different world, not as a man but as a lion? And Downing rightly spotlights the wilder parts of Narnia that made Tolkien, a devout Catholic, blanch: rampant delight in Paganism (which Lewis saw as our most primal desire for something to worship), unabashed Platonic/Aristotlian philosophy, and revelry in medieval and humanistic ideals.
As you can see, Into the Wardrobe is quite a unique little book, and it is all the more remarkable for staying conversational and lively when elucidating conceptual devices and cross-referencing like mad. You don’t realize it’s a scholarly work, the flow is just that good, but it’s legit for all that. It has quite a specific purpose – to decipher the evolving intricate web of culture, fantasy, and spirituality that make the Chronicles so enduring – and fulfills it wonderfully. And as a bonus, I came away knowing Clive Staples Lewis much more intimately and insightfully than I did before. Bravo, David Downing!
Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles
Author: David C. Downing
Hardcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Jossey-Bass (September 9, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0787978906
ISBN-13: 978-0787978907
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