> On Mon, Nov 25, 2002 at 07:26:08PM -0600, David Rodemaker > <dar at horusinc.com> wrote: > > > Well, yeah. Except that for Lewis, the Christian mythos is absolutely > > > true about the universe. The fair question, as I see it, is: Did Lewis > > > expect the series to hit people this way, or could he reasonably have > > > expected it to? And if so, how did he feel about it? -- Not > necessarily > > > questions we can answer. > > The same argument could be made about LOTR, it's certainly as > Christian as > > Narnia is... > > Um, no. Narnia is very much a direct analogy, and the author > admits it. Tolkien in LOTR denies any allegory along those > lines, and it's a much weaker connection. > > I don't deny there are some parallels, but Narnia is several > large steps closer to Christianity than Middle-Earth. Bah. Denial does not equate actuality. The amount of mystical Christian allegory in LOTR is quite high, and any degree of 'less/more' really starts to hinge on the intentional/unintentional axis. Besides, while Narnia is a somewhat direct analogy, and explicitly so, of the NT, that does not mean that LOTR *isn't* a less explicit but no less direct analogy. IIRC, his denials mainly tendered to the question that LOTR was written as a commentary of WWII. (That is based btw, on reading done *many* years ago of his letters, etc. Specific denials of Ring=Nukes and a specific comment comes to mind along the obverse, 'Gandalf is an angel') I can't think of medium-to-large 'sized' concept from Christianity that I cannot find without difficulty in LOTR. David