Fascination with C.S. Lewis has only increased since his death in 1963. Like his friend and mentor J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis was a scholar of medieval literature who transformed the imagination of the modern world. In particular, his Narnia saga was intended for children but has often pursued readers into adulthood long before they were adapted for film.
Norman Stone’s documentary The Narnia Code (out on DVD) uses an exercise in scholarly interpretation, the sort of thing that goes on among academics all the time, as an excuse for the hyperbole normally associated with cracking a cold case crime or a revelation from the Mayan calendar. It’s the tone, not the topic, that’s a little wacky. The Narnia Code’s subject is Michael Ward’s book Planet Narnia, an intriguing effort to uncover deeper influences in the composition of the Narnia books. Ward argues that Lewis employed a suitably pre-modern template for his creation, the seven planets of the ancientsa scheme that was the basis for poetry by Dante and Milton. According to Ward, Lewis endowed each of his seven tales with the mythic character of one of those wondering heavenly bodies visible before the invention of the telescope.
Ward’s theory has attracted great interest among scholars and fans of Lewis, though Planet Narnia isn’t sufficiently shocking to cause the earth to tilt on its axis or change he meaning of the Narnia saga. What’s interesting about Stone’s documentary, despite its stentorian tone, is the opportunity it provides for discussing Lewis’ place in the ongoing, unfortunate argument between science and religionreally between two schools of fundamentalists bent on imposing their narrow views. As Lewis observed in his fiction, science can understand how something happens but has a harder time determining why. Fiction can be a more fruitful field for harvesting the possible meaning of it all.
