XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien   
   From: hayesmstw@hotmail.com   
      
   On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 10:11:34 -0500, "Michael Martin"    
   wrote:   
      
   >Jess Winfield wrote:   
   >   
   >[snip stuff about CSL's bad suggestions for Tolkien]   
   >   
   >> It leaves me wondering... is anyone else here glad that CSL, who   
   >> often matched genres with JRRT, never attempted an epic poem in   
   >> rhyming couplets?   
   >   
   >I have to disagree that CSL "matched" genres with Tolkien.  LotR is   
   >epic fantasy - actually pseudo-historical fantasy, written as if to   
   >report something that actually happened.  CSL's fiction was nothing of   
   >the kind.  Narnia was much more an allegory (though he called them   
   >"supposals," and disliked straight allegory) and the sci-fi trilogy   
   >was, well, sci-fi!   
   >   
   >Probably the closes comparison in fiction you could make is The Silm   
   >with Narnia, and even that is quite tenuous.   
   >   
   >I'm familiar with CSL's faith-based nonfiction, but not his literary   
   >essays, so I can't make any informed comparison there.   
      
   In one of them he says:   
      
   C.S. Lewis and allegory.   
            Source: Carpenter 1978:30.   
       Lewis wrote to Tolkien on 7 December 1929, after reading   
     Tolkien's poem on Beren and Luthien, "The two things that come   
     out clearly are the sense of reality in the background and the   
     mythical value: the essence of a myth being that it should   
     have no taint of allegory to the maker and yet should suggest   
     incipient allegories to the reader."   
      
   I just fished that out for a discussion in rec.arts.books, where someone was   
   suggesting that the most recent Harry Potter book was an allegory.   
      
   Well, that isn't exactly a literary essay either, since it was a personal   
   letter, but I think the most predominant "genre" if it can be called that, in   
   both LotR and the Narnia stories is myth.   
      
   Though "genre" is a bit of a misnomer - let's say a literary form. A single   
   work can contain a number of literary forms, but "genre" is something normally   
   applied to the work as a whole, and both the Narnia stories and LotR are   
   fantasy, as someone else pointed out. "The pilgrims progress" may be called an   
   allegory, but I supose the difference between the Narnia stories and LotR is   
   in the adjective "epic". LotR, for all the twists of the plot, is a single   
   quest, with a single cast of characters. Narnia is, like Middle Earth, a   
   fantasy world, but unlike Middle Earth, has people going in and out of it from   
   our world. It is the setting for a number of different stories and plots.   
      
   There are allegorical elements in Narnia, especially in "The voyage of the   
   Dawn Treader", but these are not strong enough or sustained enough to warrant   
   calling the whole book, never mind the series, allegorical.   
      
      
      
      
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   Steve Hayes   
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