C. N. Manlove

Discusses writers such as Edwin Abbott, Peter Ackroyd, Richard Adams, Brian Aldiss, F. Anstey, J.G. Ballard, Clive Barker, J.M. Barrie, William Beckford, Max Beerbohm, Algernon Blackwood, William Blake, Robert Browning, John Bunyan, Byron, Italo Calvino, Lewis Carroll, Angela Carter, Chaucer, G.K. Chesterton, Coleridge, John Collier, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Dunsany, George du Maurier, E.R. Eddison, T.S. Eliot, John Fowles, Leon Garfield, Alan Garner, David Garnett, Mary Gentle, William Golding, Kenneth Grahame, H. Rider Haggard, Michael John Harrison, W.H. Hodgson, Robert Holdstock, Laurence Housman, W.H. Hudson, Robert Irwin, Margaret Irwin, Henry James, Richard Jefferies, Douglas Jerrold, Diana Wynne Jones, Anna Kavan, Charles Kingsley, Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Lang, D.H. Lawrence, Tanith Lee, J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Doris Lessing, C.S. Lewis, Matthew Lewis, Wyndham Lewis, David Lindsay, Penelope Lively, Hugh Lofting, Edward Bulwer Lytton, George MacDonald, Arthur Machen, Christopher Marlowe, John Masefield, Guy de Maupassant, William Mayne, George Meredith, A.A. Milne, Milton, Mrs. Mary Louisa Molesworth, Michael Moorcock, Kenneth Morris, William Morris, Iris Murdoch, Edith Nesbit, George Orwell, Mervyn Peake, Alexander Pope, John Cowper Powys, T.F. Powys, Terry Pratchett, Christopher Priest, Phillip Pullman, Rabelais, Ann Radcliffe, Herbert Read, Christina Rossetti, Salman Rushdie, John Ruskin, Shakespeare, Shelley, Sir Philip Sidney, Muriel Spark, Edmund Spenser, Robert Louis Stevenson, Jonathan Swift, Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray, D.M. Thomas, J.R.R. Tolkien, Evelyn Underhill, Horace Walpole, Ian Watson, H.G. Wells, Robert Westall, John Whitbourn, T.H. White, Oscar Wilde, Charles Williams, Jeanette Winterson, Wordsworth, S. Fowler Wright, Yeats, and others.

The well-known and well-loved books that make up C.S. Lewis's "Chronicles of Narnia" have long held a prominent place on many a child's (and adult's) bookshelf. Since their publication in the 195Os, the books' depiction of the fantasy land of Narnia has inspired the wonder, delight, and imaginations of children around the world. More than just fairy tales, the stories show readers that all is not as it seems, that perseverance can bring forth great rewards, and that growth is a continual and unpredictable process. Most important, arguably, is the ongoing struggle between good and evil depicted in the "Chronicles.". These themes are displayed amid the experiences of several children, particularly Lucy, Edmund, Susan, and Peter Pevensie. Beginning with the first book of the series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), we follow the children as they magically enter the kingdom of Narnia for the first of many adventures there, including their meeting the memorable lion, Aslan. In the sequel, Prince Caspian, they help the prince and his army of Talking Beasts conquer the usurping Telemarines; the following novel, The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader," continues Caspian's story by recounting his voyage to the End of the World. The fourth book, The Silver Chair, returns to the theme of an evil witch, first explored in The Lion, while The Horse and His Boy details Narnia's near-invasion by the Calormenes. The Magician's Nephew accounts for the creation of Narnia, and the seventh tale, The Last Battle (1956), tells of Narnia's final days. Colin Manlove has carefully studied the tales and shows that they are patterned narratives with many complex, intertwined threads. He relates these narratives to Lewis's views on stories, and also sets Lewis's books in their literary context, both juvenile and adult. After a discussion of the critical receptions of the tales, Manlove supplies a full chapter on each book for in-depth analysis. Questions that may occur fleetingly to the casual reader, such as the matter of possible Christian imagery (most notably in Aslan's sacrificial death and resurrection), are examined fully to give the reader a wider scope of reference. Ultimately, Manlove contends that these stories mirror Lewis's view of the universe as both mysterious and complex.

This is the first account of invented stories of the Christian supernatural, of fantasies that depict imagined forms of heaven or hell, angel or devil, world and creator; it considers their growth and changes from the time of Dante to the present day. Relatively infrequent, such works nevertheless for centuries represented some of the highest aspirations of art. Works considered here include the French Queste del Saint Graal, Dante's Commedia, the Middle English Pearl, the first book of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, Milton's Paradise Lost, Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell and poems by Blake; and, from the post-Romantic and increasingly less 'Christian' period, the fantasies of George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis and many others. In the development of these works, a primary issue is found to be the fantasy-making imagination itself, at first seen as a potential obstacle to plain Christian purpose, but more recently given freer rein in the new aim of demonstrating God's existence in a more secular world. The picture that emerges is of a literary mode which becomes more fictive and indirect in its presentation of Christian vision.