XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books.childrens
XPost: rec.arts.sf.written
From: spamgard@blueyonder.co.uk
nystulc@cs.com wrote:
> Tim Bruening wrote:
>
>> Why didn't she [Jadis] try to conquer Archenland and Calormen to
>> make Narnia a World Empire?
>
> Lewis was not Tolkien, and there are no extensive background histories
> available. So there is no published answer to your question.
> However, if you are asking me to explain a contradiction, I just
> don't see the contradiction. If you are suggesting that Jadis ought,
> logically, to have wielded more geo-political power than she
> evidently did, you have yet to explain why you think this ought to
> have been the case. The story portrays her as a powerful enchantress
> who controlls an entire kingdom, and a small empire as well. Why do
> you think her empire should have been larger than Lewis says it was?
My response to this question? Because of what we see of her in Charn and
in our world. She comes across there as someone intent on
world-domination. We know that Magician's Nephew was written after LWW,
so you might expect to see inconsistency between these stories, more
than between any other of the stories.
> If I were to speculate, I would say that, while the Lone Islands were
> probably her most significant actual foreign holding, she also held
> considerable influence among the giant-lands to the north and among
> the dangerous evil creatures of the wild lands to the West.
We are also told in /The Silver Chair/ that Jadis came out of the North,
and that the owls think that the witch in /The Silver Chair/ may be "one
of the same crew".
> She herself is not human, and has minimal interest in human subjects.
> Archenland, of course, is a human habitation nestled in mountains, so
> I imagine the explanation would be similar to historical explanation
> for why Switzerland usually avoided conquest. It simply did not have
> enough importance in terms of strategic value or natural resources,
> to be worth the extra effort to conquer it despite its natural
> barriers. And as for Calormen, it is protected by powerful immortal
> evil entities of its own.
Good point. I had forgotten about Tash!
> When she first came to the Narnian World, Jadis had virtually no
> magical power. Most of the magic she had learned in Charn was
> useless, and she had to learn the secrets of the new world. Her
> power is rather place-specific. It is fairly clear, from LWW, that
> Jadis has developed a special relationship with the Kingdom of
> Narnia. She has deciphered the runes inscribed on the Stone Table
> and in the Secret Cave, and thereby learned to take advantage of the
> "deep magic from the dawn of time". She has somehow become the
> beneficiary of a magical contract that, if broken, will cause all
> Narnia (the country, presumably) to perish in a great upheaval.
Isn't this "deep magic from the dawn of time" something to do with what
happens in Magician's Nephew? Even though LWW was written first, do you
think Lewis might have had that phrase in mind when writing Magician's
Nephew?
What I find is an inconsistency, is that while the Lamp-post is
explained in Magician's Nephew, we never get an explanation for the
Stone Table. I would have liked to read the story behind that. Oh, and
the story behind Cair Paravel. And what happened to the descendents of
King Frank and Queen Helen. That wide gap of time between Magician's
Nephew and LWW is annoying empty, with lots of loose ends to tie up.
Christopher
--
---
Reply clue: Saruman welcomes you to Spamgard
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
|
