The Way into Narnia: A Reader's Guide - Softcover

Schakel, Peter J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802829848 ISBN 13: 9780802829849

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005

Synopsis

The practical companion you need for your journey through C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia

How did a middle-aged professor with no children write books that have become beloved classics of children's literature? What is the best order for reading the Chronicles of Narnia? Whatever one's question, The Way into Narnia offers valuable guidance for first-time visitors to Narnia and fresh insights for those who have already traveled there often.

Exploring ideas from Lewis's friend J. R. R. Tolkien, Peter Schakel shows that the best way to enter Narnia is to read the Chronicles as fairy tales. After walking readers through each of the books, he concludes the tour with a unique section of annotations that clarify unfamiliar words and unusual passages.

About this title

About the Author

Peter J. Schakel (1941–2024) was Peter C. and Emajean Cook Professor of English at Hope College, where he taught for forty-eight years. He was honored in 2013 with the Hope Outstanding Professor Educator (H.O.P.E.) Award, an honor presented by the graduating class to the professor whom they feel exemplifies the best qualities of Hope College teachers. An internationally respected student of C. S. Lewis’s work, he published multiple books on Lewis’s fiction and its relationship to faith, imagination, and the arts. 

From the Back Cover

Ralph C. Wood
In his clear book-by-book analysis of the Narnia Chronicles, Peter Schakel interprets them not as heavy-handed allegories but as sprightly fairy tales. . . . Schakel also offers more than forty pages of immensely helpful annotations that illuminate obscure terms and historical allusions; this added blessing is itself worth the price of the book.

Claude Rawson
Peter Schakel is outstanding among C. S. Lewis commentators for his deep knowledge of that writer and for the warmth, intelligence, and lucidity of his commentaries. His new guide to the Narnia books is a vivid and lively presentation informative, helpful, and free of any trace of mechanical or pretentious explication.

Doris T. Myers
With his repeated insistence that the Chronicles of Narnia are fairy tales, Schakel provides a welcome counterbalance to commentators who treat them as "Seven Sunday School Lessons in Search of a Teacher."

Reviews

Schakel, author of Reading with the Heart: The Way into Narnia and Imagination and the Arts in C.S. Lewis, combines material from those books with new insights in this perceptive and thorough reader's guide. The book is driven by Schakel's conviction that "the best way to enter Narnia is to read the Chronicles as fairy tales," and to that end, he offers an essay on how Lewis's notion of the fairy tale was profoundly shaped by his friend J.R.R. Tolkien's definitions of faeries and fantasy worlds. Schakel can be refreshingly opinionated, such as when he admonishes readers who try to read the Narnia series as a strict allegory: "they are tempted to look for one-to-one parallels between characters, objects, and events in Narnia and corresponding ones in the Bible. However, that is not the way Lewis wanted the Chronicles to be read. Instead, he proposes "broad patterns of Christian meaning" in the series, analyzing each novel and discussing how each employs elements of the fairy tale to construct those patterns. Schakel's guide is sometimes scholarly in approach (which is not surprising, as he is an English professor and a Lewis scholar), incorporating, for example, a detailed essay on the textual differences between various editions of the Chronicles and a thorough discussion of the vexing question of the order in which they should be read. He also offers an engaging biographical essay on Lewis and almost 80 pages of annotations at the end of the book, "clarifying...archaic words, identifying allusions, indicating parallels to other works of Lewis, and offering interpretive comments for problematic passages."
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Edition details

• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802829848
• ISBN 13: 9780802829849
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 212