Product Description

The practical companion you need for your journey through C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia

How did a middle-aged professor with no children write books that have become beloved classics of children's literature? What is the best order for reading the Chronicles of Narnia? Whatever one's question, The Way into Narnia offers valuable guidance for first-time visitors to Narnia and fresh insights for those who have already traveled there often.

Exploring ideas from Lewis's friend J. R. R. Tolkien, Peter Schakel shows that the best way to enter Narnia is to read the Chronicles as fairy tales. After walking readers through each of the books, he concludes the tour with a unique section of annotations that clarify unfamiliar words and unusual passages.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1022833 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .60" h x 6.10" w x 9.00" l, .65 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 212 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Schakel, author of Reading with the Heart: The Way into Narnia and Imagination and the Arts in C.S. Lewis, combines material from those books with new insights in this perceptive and thorough reader's guide. The book is driven by Schakel's conviction that "the best way to enter Narnia is to read the Chronicles as fairy tales," and to that end, he offers an essay on how Lewis's notion of the fairy tale was profoundly shaped by his friend J.R.R. Tolkien's definitions of faeries and fantasy worlds. Schakel can be refreshingly opinionated, such as when he admonishes readers who try to read the Narnia series as a strict allegory: "they are tempted to look for one-to-one parallels between characters, objects, and events in Narnia and corresponding ones in the Bible. However, that is not the way Lewis wanted the Chronicles to be read. Instead, he proposes "broad patterns of Christian meaning" in the series, analyzing each novel and discussing how each employs elements of the fairy tale to construct those patterns. Schakel's guide is sometimes scholarly in approach (which is not surprising, as he is an English professor and a Lewis scholar), incorporating, for example, a detailed essay on the textual differences between various editions of the Chronicles and a thorough discussion of the vexing question of the order in which they should be read. He also offers an engaging biographical essay on Lewis and almost 80 pages of annotations at the end of the book, "clarifying...archaic words, identifying allusions, indicating parallels to other works of Lewis, and offering interpretive comments for problematic passages."
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From the Back Cover
Ralph C. Wood
In his clear book-by-book analysis of the Narnia Chronicles, Peter Schakel interprets them not as heavy-handed allegories but as sprightly fairy tales. . . . Schakel also offers more than forty pages of immensely helpful annotations that illuminate obscure terms and historical allusions; this added blessing is itself worth the price of the book.

Claude Rawson
Peter Schakel is outstanding among C. S. Lewis commentators for his deep knowledge of that writer and for the warmth, intelligence, and lucidity of his commentaries. His new guide to the Narnia books is a vivid and lively presentation — informative, helpful, and free of any trace of mechanical or pretentious explication.

Doris T. Myers
With his repeated insistence that the Chronicles of Narnia are fairy tales, Schakel provides a welcome counterbalance to commentators who treat them as "Seven Sunday School Lessons in Search of a Teacher."

About the Author
Peter J. Schakel is Peter C. and Emajean Cook Professor of English at Hope College, Holland, Michigan. An internationally respected student of C. S. Lewis's work, he has written or edited five previous books on Lewis, including two about the Chronicles of Narnia.