Update: You can download the audio for free by going here and clicking the “related media” tab.
Alan Jacobs, author of the excellent The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis (don’t judge the book by its cover!), Douglas Wilson (author of the soon-to-be-released insightful book What I Learned in Narnia) and N. D. Wilson (who is writing the screenplay for the forthcoming film adaption of The Great Divorce)—sit down to talk about C. S. Lewis’s worldview, imagination, and writing. Listen especially for Jacobs’s insightful take on the key element from the Narnia books that can’t be replicated in the films.
The fascinating conversation is about an hour and 15 minutes. Impatient types can fast-forward the first 30 seconds!
I’ll post an audio file link if it becomes available.
Oh, one other note. Some readers will be aware of Michael Ward’s groundbreaking work on the secret key of the Narnia books (Planet Narnia—see my post on it here). Jacobs explains that he started reading the book unconvinced, but finished the book definitively convinced. But he offers a caution or two as well. Tyndale has now published a popular-level version of Ward’s book: The Narnia Code: C. S. Lewis and the Secret of the Seven Heavens.
Referenced in the video,
From Arthur Kirsch’s “Auden and Christianity,” Page 102
Finally, Auden writes, “however many further adventures one may care to invent for Don Quixote—and, as in all cases of a true myth, they are potentially infinite—the conclusion can only be the one which Cervantes gives, namely that he recovers his senses and dies.” He must say to his friends, “‘Ne’er look for birds of this year in the nests of the last: I was mad but I am no in my senses: I was once Don Quixote de la Mancha but am now the plain Alonso Quixano, and I hope the sincerity of my words and my repentance may restore me to the same esteem you have had for me before.’” “In the last analysis,” Auden says,
The saint cannot be presented aesthetically. The ironic vision gives us a Don Quixote who is innocent of every sin but one; and that one sin he can put off only by ceasing to exist as a character in a book, for all such characters are condemned to it, namely, the sin of being at all times and under all circumstances interesting.
Analogy is not identity.
Art is not enough.
wow. great discussion. inspiring at multiple levels. thanks for this.
Great discussion. Just finished reading Perelandra with my book club the other day. This gave me the urge to re-read That Hideous Strength. What a fantastic trilogy!
Thank you for sharing this! These men quoted Owen Barfield as saying “What Lewis thought about everything was [contained] in what he thought about anything.” Alan Jacobs commented that Lewis’s “unity of purpose and unity of vision… finds expression in many different forms.” I immediately connected those ideas & statements with the way that the Scriptures all point to the gospel of Jesus Christ. There is unity of purpose and unity of vision in Scripture (which is the gospel), and there are many forms of the gospel (though one gospel – Thanks, Tim Keller!). What are your thoughts? Am I stretching this too far? Would Barfield’s description of Lewis’s thoughts be a good description of the Bible’s “thoughts” on the gospel?
That was fantastic.
Audio is now available as this address: http://www.canonpress.org/store/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=397&idcategory=0
You need to push “Related Media” to get to the link.