Copyright 2008 by Bruce L. Edwards. (Click here for Permissions information)

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The genre of fiction, by modern reckoning, consists of invented stories of various lengths that depict the actions and monitor the thoughts of imaginary characters in their engagement with the conflicts and circumstances that ensue. Novels, tales, vignettes, novellas, short stories, are among the names given to the individual products of the human imagination referred to as “fiction.”

The word fiction itself is derived from the Latin, fictio, which means simply to make or shape. The term fiction begins to appear in English texts around 1412 with the sense of “invention of the mind,” and, by 1599, is in common use as a term to describe generally any imaginative prose literature, distinguishing it from putatively non-fiction works, and from “poetry” as such. (It is obviously possible to tell stories through poetic discourse as well, but fiction is typically expected to be ordered by plot, dialogue, characterization, setting, etc., in a deliberate and recognizable pattern, rather than by the building-blocks and conventions of metre, rhythm, diction, etc. that comprise the art and reception of poetry.)

Anglo-Irish author and critic, C. S. Lewis, draws attention to fiction’s core element succinctly when he says stories simply are “accounts of events that did not take place” (The Personal Heresy [Oxford: Oxford UP, 1939], 120). The question then becomes, why do human beings in general and Christians in particular create narratives depicting “events that did not take place,” instead of just rendering straightforward reports of real deeds done in their own time and place—or recalling past deeds and personages with as much accuracy and integrity as they can muster?

There is no civilization on record that does not have its own stories, its fictions; in fact, to qualify as a “civilization,” even to be recognized and/or recorded as one, in some sense requires from that civilization recoverable stories that can capture what it was like to be part of that society and culture at such-and-such a time. What we know of antiquity, and of what we tend to call the “pre-modern” ages, we know through stories as much as we do “histories”—stories that are to be heard, read, reflected upon, and thus responded to, as humans trying to understand themselves and others, including others far away and long ago.

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In light of the “new” controversy over the “recent” discovery of references to the resurrection in Dead Sea Scroll materials, keep in mind:

In the New Testament, the thing really happens. The Dying God really appears—as a historical Person, living in a definite place and time. . . . The old myth of the Dying God . . . comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We must not be nervous about ‘parallels’ [in other religions]: they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren’t.

—C. S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions about Christianity”; “Myth Became Fact” in God in The Dock, 58; 66; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970.

Copyright 2008 by Bruce L. Edwards. (Click here for Permissions information)

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The genres of biography and autobiography refer, literally, to writing (“graphing”) a life (“bio”), one’s own or someone else’s. In the West, they are regarded as fact-driven works created to capture and preserve the life—and usually the times—of notable individuals.

Biographies are presumed to be the product of research, the submersion of their authors in the milieu of their subjects, built upon the canvassing and collating of events, interviews, conversations, diaries, letters, and other related historical documents, accounts, and artifacts contemporary with their period.

Such primary research is often refined as well by reflection upon the subject outside of her or his own historical context, that is, in view of the subject’s reputation earned, corrected, or abandoned by other fellow biographers.

The motives of biographers may vary; one may wish simply to try to assemble the facts of a human life in chronological order: what, where, who, when, how, and why—but minimizing “interpretation”; another may choose to explain and thus focus a historical period through the lens of a single life deemed as significant and “telling” beyond its immediate context and period; still others may choose to assess the value and impact of an individual simply in order to praise or condemn the person’s contributions to history.

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Ten Maxims for Reflection and Debate
Dr. Bruce L. Edwards

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1. SKEPTICISM is always easier than belief, for skepticism commits one to nothing in particular, and removes accountability. The believer by contrast must live up to her principles and face the possibility of being wrong or hypocritical. And doleful public scrutiny. All the skeptic has to do is be skeptical.

2. RELATIVISM is less defensible than a belief in absolutes because one must become an absolutist to denounce absolutism; relativism is thus self-refuting, or, if it is not, it is merely self-defeating. It surfacely appears to be more tolerant, but it in fact tends toward the dogmatic, suppressing the pursuit of truth in the name of letting us all believe what we accidently arrived at by Tuesday afternoon.

3. WORSHIP of logic and reason in and of themselves as the final arbiters of reality is no more noble or courageous than the worship of any handmade idol. It simply appears more respectable because the object of veneration—one’s own psyche—is temporarily hidden from view.

4. CONTEMPLATION of humankind’s apparent insignificance in the face of the immensity and complexity of the universe at first appears to sanction humility at its utmost; but upon further review, it can be seen as a form of acute arrogance. It assumes that all there is to being human and all there is to understand about oneself and the universe is what one can learn by assembling data from the five senses as aided by instruments of our own making.
   

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by Megan J. Robinson

“Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning. A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside. The following Him is, of course, the essential point.”
— C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

In taking up a book on prayer, I am never without the feeling that the better action would be to take up prayer itself. There is always in my mind a paraphrase of the old dictum: Those who can, do. Those who can’t, read. As much as I love Lewis, this is why I have so long bypassed his final work Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, posthumously published in 1964. Give me to read massive tomes of long-returned-to-dust theologians and their complex theories, make me write papers on the nature and substance of the Trinity, but do not ask me to read a book on prayer, because then I cannot avoid the knowledge that prayer is for, well, praying. I can easily imagine Lewis listening to this, leaning back in a chair, pipe in hand and a faint smile on his face, saying, “Well, get on then.”

Yet I think that Lewis would sympathize with this trepidation, for if merely reading about prayer – let alone praying – causes tremors in the soul, how much more so could writing about it? He first essayed an attempt at a book on prayer in December 1952, and referenced it in correspondence throughout the subsequent year, until February 1954, when he abandoned that first manuscript, saying, “It was clearly not for me.” A decade later, in March and April 1963, he revisited the format used twenty-three years earlier to great effect in The Screwtape Letters, and in Letters to Malcolm wrote a series of twenty-two letters between himself and an imagined correspondent, “Malcolm.”

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I have never met any dedicated reader of the Chronicles of Narnia who told me that Prince Caspian was her favorite volume.

I think I know the reasons why this might be so, and in due course, I will eventually get around to addressing this question. But let’s start here: sequels get no respect!

That said, let me unabashedly point out what every avid reader of C S Lewis knows: that Jack is as capable of creating a memorable theme or voicing a quotable line in Prince Caspian as he is in any of his works. And has, indeed, done so.

The trouble is that there are so many of them in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe! Nearly any follow up tale would have been, forgive the pun, dwarfed by its rich body of resonant dialogues and spectacular events. In a word, Prince Caspian is literally anti-climactic. But look at what it is up against:

First, in LWW, there is Professor Kirke’s wonderfully mysterious house with the magic wardrobe that Lucy the youngest finds first, and his eloquent rebuke of Peter and Susan for missing the clues that would have spared them worry over Lucy’s behavior: “Logic! . . . . Why don’t they teach logic at these schools!”

Next, there is Mr. Beaver’s subtle but firm declaration of Aslan’s true character when Susan asks, “Then he isn’t safe?” And Mr. Beaver intones, “Safe? . . . Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Then there is the plaintive scene at the Stone Table, where Susan and Lucy keep their solemn vigil and the mice patiently nibble and gnaw to release Aslan from his bonds.

Finally there is the coronation scene at the end, when the risen Aslan, triumphant over the White Witch through the deeper magic from before the dawn of time, slips away, and Mr. Beaver, ever the spokesbeaver for sober reality, explains, “He’ll be coming and going. . . . One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down. . . . He’s wild, you know. Not like a tame lion.”

So this we can agree upon: Prince Caspian, the book (as well as the movie released May 16, 2008) had no easy act to follow! Yet, It must be underscored that Lewis embued the tale with its own suspenseful plot devices, a grand share of memorable conversations all nestled within more than enough swashbuckling, court intrigue, species-bigotry and species-envy, not to mention fratricide, conniving advisors, and a new set of talking animal and mythological characters of the kinds that he dearly loved!

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