Reviews

A Reader's Guide to Caspian: A Journey into C. S. Lewis's Narnia by Marjorie Lamp Mead, Leland Ryken

neilrcoulter's review

3.0

I'd previously read (and reviewed) [a:Ryken|60789|Leland Ryken|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1201100564p2/60789.jpg] and [a:Mead|141651|Marjorie Lamp Mead|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png]'s [b:A Reader's Guide Through the Wardrobe|242141|A Reader's Guide Through the Wardrobe Exploring C.S. Lewis's Classic Story|Leland Ryken|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347802906s/242141.jpg|234585], and this second volume about [b:Prince Caspian|121749|Prince Caspian (Chronicles of Narnia, #2)|C.S. Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1308814880s/121749.jpg|3348636] being much the same, my opinion of it is very similar. The first half of the book is a chapter-by-chapter breeze through Caspian, through the lens (unsurprisingly) of [a:Northrop Frye|58765|Northrop Frye|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1229101452p2/58765.jpg]'s emphasis on literary archetypes. As with the first Reader's Guide, I wanted more detail on the backgrounds and influences of different elements of [a:Lewis|1069006|C.S. Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1367519078p2/1069006.jpg]'s story, but the overview here is fairly basic. The reader is often told how predictably the story is preceding, based on expectations from literary archetypes.

What makes this book better, I think, than the previous volume is the inclusion of a couple of very helpful chapters as appendices. The first is an excellent guide to understanding allegory in literature. The Narnia stories live with a kind of double identity, in which they are obviously related in some way to Christianity, yet Lewis himself spoke out against seeing them as allegory. Ryken and Mead thoughtfully explain the multiple meanings and nuances of the word "allegory," and then guide the reader toward what I feel is a good way to understand Narnia. In fact, I really wish that a lot of Christians could read just this chapter, to combat the prevalent idea that literature can only be of value to the Christian reader when all of the details of a story line up explicitly with Christian beliefs, doctrine, or biblical examples. Ryken and Mead recommend a way of reading that reduces the stress that such a reader might experience in trying so desperately to relate each element of the story to something else in the Christian life. This appendix is followed by a chapter on "the Christian vision of Prince Caspian, which is a very good overview of the ways in which the story is understood from a theological or biblical worldview.

One rather odd appendix is simply a collection of extracts from reviews of the film version of [b:The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe|100915|The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia, #1)|C.S. Lewis|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1353029077s/100915.jpg|4790821]. It's sort of amusing, but I don't know why it's in the book.

This Reader's Guide is clearly in the "academics trying to reach out to the common person" domain--a kind of writing that is often difficult for academics to craft successfully. The temptation is, on the one side, overwhelming detail for the general readership, or, on the other side, an oversimplified, condescending tone. Ryken and Mead generally do a fine job of this kind of writing, though the tone struck me at times as verging toward that condescending tone. They fall prey to the academic's favorite writing tic: beginning too many sentences with "Indeed." But otherwise their writing is free from lit-crit jargon.

My biggest criticism of the book is its relentlessly positive, almost worshipful, view of C.S. Lewis. I graduated from Wheaton College, and I well remember the reverence that Lewis enjoys on campus, not just in the English department (and the seemingly irresistible pull on Wheaton literature faculty to write books about Lewis: [a:Wayne Martindale|199697|Wayne Martindale|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png], [a:Rolland Hein|1935|Rolland Hein|https://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-d9f6a4a5badfda0f69e70cc94d962125.png], and [a:Alan Jacobs|3957|Alan Jacobs|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1202837390p2/3957.jpg], for example, included in that group). I love Lewis, but certainly he has his quirks and oddities, and things that I can't celebrate or unquestioningly enjoy to the full. Reading Ryken and Mead, however, the reader might assume Lewis could do no wrong. It somehow makes me distrust the writing, just slightly, when I feel that the authors are giving me a thoroughly one-sided, positive view on any person or topic, and that was the case as I was reading this book.

As I mentioned in my previous review, it's too bad that this book was published just before [a:Michael Ward|194177|Michael Ward|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1334264406p2/194177.jpg]'s brilliant [b:Planet Narnia|1800794|Planet Narnia The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis|Michael Ward|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348068661s/1800794.jpg|1799947], as I find that book to be a most extremely helpful interpretive guide for the Narnia series--so much so that now when I read any interpretation of Narnia that doesn't incorporate Ward's planetary framework, it seems like it's really missing something big.