Planet Narnia

by Johnny

Anyone reading the literary criticism of The Chronicles of Narnia will notice that C.S. Lewis scholars have no answers regarding the supposed disorganized, “hodgepodge” (as Tolkien referred to his friend’s creation) that characterizes the series. That is until Michael Ward and his seminal work, Planet Narnia came along. Ward believes that the popular explanation that the Narnia series are just random and chaotic does not do justice to the intricate mind of C.S. Lewis. Rather “there is an organising intelligence at work” and Ward spends his entire book showing exactly that.

Ward argues that each novel in the Narnia series corresponds to one of the seven planets of Medieval Astrology: Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn. C.S. Lewis wrote back in 1939 that “[t]he characters of the planets, as conceived by medieval astrology, seem to me to have a permanent value as spiritual symbols”. Three years earlier, Lewis wrote a masterful poem (”The Planets”) and it is from this poem that Michael Ward noticed similarities between the descriptions of the planets and crucial plotpoints in the Narnia novels. Take for instance Lewis’ description of Jupiter, “Of wrath ended / And woes mended, of winter passed / And guilt forgiven,” which sounds like the basic plot of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where winter passes as Aslan is on the move and his forgiving atoning work in the case of Edmund Pevensie.

Ward examines each of the planets in detail by exploring how they are portrayed in Lewis’ other works of literature and scholarship, before showing how each Narnia novel fully embodies their corresponding planet and the theological messages that result from each. In this instance Ward’s vast knowledge and respect for the C.S. Lewis corpus serves as a credit to his argument. Ward even covers his bases by tackling tough questions like did C.S. Lewis, as a Christian, believe in astrology or how come C.S. Lewis never revealed this planetary blueprint to anyone?

In the end Planet Narnia is a groundbreaking work by a C.S. Lewis scholar and is highly recommended.

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