Unsurprisingly, there is much in the media these days about C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia. Personally, I am thrilled with anticipation at the impending theatrical release of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, even if it is Disney, and even though I know should maintain at least a small degree of cynicism about potential changes the filmmakers might have made to what has been one of my favorite stories since I first read it in the fourth grade. Look what Hollywood did to Earthsea, after all. But I can’t help being excited, if only because in the trailers everything looks so splendid and I can’t wait to fall into that magic again, like Digory and Polly falling into the pools in the Wood Between Worlds.

The media seems to be concentrating on two themes. One is Narnia vs. Harry Potter. Personally, I think the Narnia movie will tromp all over the fourth HP movie this season, if only because with it’s PG-13 rating many younger kids won’t get to see Goblet of Fire. On top of that, Narnia is fresh, cinematically, and has been aggregating fans for 50 years, most of whom will be as ga-ga as I am about seeing it on screen, especially if it’s told as faithfully and as well as its cousin, The Lord of the Rings. As an extra bonus, Narnia has the potential to draw in the Christian audience that condems the “occultist” tendencies of Harry Potter, and likes to glorify the Christian allegories present in the Narnia books. That, of course, is the second major theme the media is focusing on — how much emphasis one can or should place upon the Christian elements of the Chronicles of Narnia.

By far, the most interesting article on the subject I’ve come across is Adam Gopnik’s “Prisoner of Narnia: How C.S. Lewis Escaped” over at The New Yorker, which tries to understand Lewis, his faith, and his creation without extolling Lewis as a paragon of Christian morality, nor condemning him for being…well, a paragon of Christian morality. What comes across most clearly is that Lewis was someone who was caught between fantasy and faith, wanting them very much to be the same thing all the while knowing that they were not and could never be.

As a member of the Inklings, Lewis is rightly hailed as one of the founding fathers of the modern mythopoeic arts, which brings me to the heart of why I am writing about this article at all. I know, personally, that Lewis inspired my first forays into mythopoeia — my first novel, co-authored with my best friend when I was 10, had many elements directly derived from the world of Narnia — and I’m certain he’s inspired many other authors as well. Gopnik’s article provides some brief insight into the workings of the mythopoet’s mind, starting with a quote from Lewis’s work of literary criticism, “The Allegory of Love”, which identifies three worlds available to the writer: the actual world of experience (it’s true because you can see it), the world of religious belief (you believe it to be true), and the world of the marvelous (you know it’s not true). Gopnik’s summary of Lewis’ observations is a succint “rule to live by” for any aspiring mythopoet:

“When we sit down to write a romance, then, we make up elves and ghosts and wraiths and wizards, in whom we don’t believe but in whom we enclose our most urgent feelings, and we demand that the world they inhabit be consistent and serious.”

This also goes a long way towards explaining why the Narnia books continue to be of such importance to Christians and non-Christians alike. It doesn’t matter that the tales happen to contain a message that is compatible with the Christian faith. The mythology contained within the books sustains itself without any external references at all, and its Truths are revealed through honest storytelling — actions, reactions, and emotion — not through didatic exposition or otherwise telling us what we should be learning. If Christians recognize similarities between their own beliefs and the mythology of Narnia, that’s fine, but even non-believers can take pleasure — Lewis’ “joy” — in a sojourn to a magical realm that emerges so completely from the page that even today, more than 50 years after it was written, kids are still poking around in the backs of closets, hoping to find a way in.