Dragaera

A question re: Beginning Fantasy for Youth

Tue Nov 26 20:13:41 PST 2002

On Tue, Nov 26, 2002 at 10:15:20PM -0500, James and Mary Burbidge <jamesandmary.burbidge at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Matthew Hunter wrote:
> > 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.
> Ummm ... I would be willing to make an extended argument that the
> _Ainulindale_ is at least as Christian as anything in the Narnia books.
> There's some later writing published in _Morgoth's Ring_ which goes even
> further (a dialogue between Finrod and a human wise-woman).

Neither of which, as I understand it, are part of LOTR.

I have avoided reading anything other than The Hobbit and LOTR 
for a reason.

-- 
Matthew Hunter (matthew at infodancer.org)
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