Sitting With C. S. Lewis In Narnia: A Study Guide PDF Download

Author: Carl Shank
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 0359955517
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 54

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Book Description
The seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia have been read and re-read by millions around the world as superb children's books that, I believe, tell the Christian story of good and evil, of creation and redemption, of love and justice and the ultimate triumph of goodness and joy. This Study Guide was written to facilitate a C. S. Lewis reading group of which I had the privilege to be a part. They will help the reader to probe the Narnia Tales and gain further insights for life in our world as well as prepare for the next.

Author: Rowan Williams
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199975736
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 167

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Book Description
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offers fascinating insight into The Chronicles of Narnia, the popular series of novels by one of the most influential Christian authors of the modern era, C. S. Lewis. Lewis once referred to certain kinds of book as a "mouthwash for the imagination." This is what he attempted to provide in the Narnia stories, argues Williams: an unfamiliar world in which we could rinse out what is stale in our thinking about Christianity--"which is almost everything," says Williams--and rediscover what it might mean to meet the holy. Indeed, Lewis's great achievement in the Narnia books is just that-he enables readers to encounter the Christian story "as if for the first time." How does Lewis makes fresh and strange the familiar themes of Christian doctrine? Williams points out that, for one, Narnia itself is a strange place: a parallel universe, if you like. There is no "church" in Narnia, no religion even. The interaction between Aslan as a "divine" figure and the inhabitants of this world is something that is worked out in the routines of life itself. Moreover, we are made to see humanity in a fresh perspective, the pride or arrogance of the human spirit is chastened by the revelation that, in Narnia, you may be on precisely the same spiritual level as a badger or a mouse. It is through these imaginative dislocations that Lewis is able to communicate--to a world that thinks it knows what faith is--the character, the feel, of a real experience of surrender in the face of absolute incarnate love. This lucid, learned, humane, and beautifully written book opens a new window onto Lewis's beloved stories, revealing the moral wisdom and passionate faith beneath their perennial appeal.

Author: Michael Ward
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199740933
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 655

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Book Description
For over half a century, scholars have laboured to show that C. S. Lewis's famed but apparently disorganised Chronicles of Narnia have an underlying symbolic coherence, pointing to such possible unifying themes as the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, and the seven books of Spenser's Faerie Queene. None of these explanations has won general acceptance and the structure of Narnia's symbolism has remained a mystery. Michael Ward has finally solved the enigma. In Planet Narnia he demonstrates that medieval cosmology, a subject which fascinated Lewis throughout his life, provides the imaginative key to the seven novels. Drawing on the whole range of Lewis's writings (including previously unpublished drafts of the Chronicles), Ward reveals how the Narnia stories were designed to express the characteristics of the seven medieval planets - - Jupiter, Mars, Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, and Saturn - - planets which Lewis described as "spiritual symbols of permanent value" and "especially worthwhile in our own generation". Using these seven symbols, Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that in each book the plot-line, the ornamental details, and, most important, the portrayal of the Christ-figure of Aslan, all serve to communicate the governing planetary personality. The cosmological theme of each Chronicle is what Lewis called 'the kappa element in romance', the atmospheric essence of a story, everywhere present but nowhere explicit. The reader inhabits this atmosphere and thus imaginatively gains connaître knowledge of the spiritual character which the tale was created to embody. Planet Narnia is a ground-breaking study that will provoke a major revaluation not only of the Chronicles, but of Lewis's whole literary and theological outlook. Ward uncovers a much subtler writer and thinker than has previously been recognized, whose central interests were hiddenness, immanence, and knowledge by acquaintance.

Author: Michael Ward
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781943243778
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
After Humanity is a guide to one of C.S. Lewis's most widely admired but least accessible works, The Abolition of Man, which originated as a series of lectures on ethics that he delivered during the Second World War. These lectures tackle the thorny question of whether moral value is objective or not. When we say something is right or wrong, are we recognizing a reality outside ourselves, or merely reporting a subjective sentiment? Lewis addresses the matter from a purely philosophical standpoint, leaving theological matters to one side. He makes a powerful case against subjectivism, issuing an intellectual warning that, in our "post-truth" twenty-first century, has even more relevance than when he originally presented it. Lewis characterized The Abolition of Man as "almost my favourite among my books," and his biographer Walter Hooper has called it "an all but indispensable introduction to the entire corpus of Lewisiana." In After Humanity, Michael Ward sheds much-needed light on this important but difficult work, explaining both its general academic context and the particular circumstances in Lewis's life that helped give rise to it, including his front-line service in the trenches of the First World War. After Humanity contains a detailed commentary clarifying the many allusions and quotations scattered throughout Lewis's argument. It shows how this resolutely philosophical thesis fits in with his other, more explicitly Christian works. It also includes a full-color photo gallery, displaying images of people, places, and documents that relate to The Abolition of Man, among them Lewis's original "blurb" for the book, which has never before been published.

Author: Jim Burgen
Publisher: HarperChristian + ORM
ISBN: 1400205638
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Becoming a dragon is a dangerously subtle process. You make a long chain of bad choices. The chain gradually wraps around you. Layer by layer, it begins to take on the aspect of scales. One day you glance at yourself in the mirror and a monster is staring back at you. You aren't who you used to be. You aren't who you want to be. You're not who you were created and designed to be. Instead, you're a dragon. When Jim Burgen was nineteen years old, he realized how easy it had been to become a dragon. He knew he didn't want to be one anymore . . . but how? No More Dragons is the story of our common, hopeful journey from dragonhood back to personhood. As Pastor Burgen narrates the remarkable process of reclaiming himself from himself, he implores modern church goers to shake off the trivialities of churchiness in favor of the substantive questions that make a spiritual transformation: “Is Jesus the only one who can undragon people?” “Why don't I like most churches?” “Where is God in difficult times?” “How do you shed decades of gnarly scales?” Some choices will lead you to a better life. Some will kill you. Some choices will add a new layer of scales to your dragon, and some will slough them off. No More Dragons is about asking Christ to deliver you and learning how to obey him.

Author: David C. Downing
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0787978906
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Published in the early 1950s, C. S. Lewis's seven Chronicles of Narnia were proclaimed instant children's classics and have been hailed in The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature as "the most sustained achievement in fantasy for children by a 20th-century author." But how could Lewis (a formidable critic, scholar, and Christian apologist)conjure up the kind of adventures in which generations of children (and adults) take such delight? In this engaging and insightful book, C. S. Lewis expert David C. Downing invites readers to join his vivid exploration of the Chronicles of Narnia, offering a detailed look at the enchanting stories themselves and also focusing on the extraordinary intellect and imagination of the man behind the Wardrobe. Downing presents each Narnia book as its own little wardrobe - each tale an opportunity to discover a visionary world of bustling vitality, sparkling beauty, and spiritual clarity. And Downing's examination of C. S. Lewis's personal life shows how the content of these classic children's books reflects Lewis's love of wonder and story, his affection for animals and homespun things, his shrewd observations about human nature, along with his vast reading, robust humor, theological speculations, medieval scholarship, and arcane linguistic jokes. A fun glossary of odd and invented words will allow readers to speak with Narnian flair, regaling friends and family with unusual words like cantrips, poltoonery, hastilude, and skirling. A masterful work that will appeal to both new and seasoned fans of Narnia, Into the Wardrobe offers a journey beyond Narnia's deceptively simple surface and into its richly textured and unexpected depths.

Author: C. S. Lewis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107604702
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Paints a lucid picture of the medieval world view, providing the historical and cultural background to the literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This, Lewis's last book, has been hailed as 'the final memorial to the work of a great scholar and teacher and a wise and noble mind'.

Author: Theodore Baehr
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
ISBN: 0805440429
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
A collection of essays that explore the lasting legacy of author C.S. Lewis and his "Chronicles of Narnia" series.

Author: C.S. Lewis
Publisher: Wyatt North Publishing, LLC
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
C. S. Lewis was a British author, lay theologian, and contemporary of J.R.R. Tolkien. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the first book in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Author: Marsha Daigle-Williamson
Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers
ISBN: 1619706652
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
The characters, plots, and potent language of C. S. Lewis's novels reveal everywhere the modern writer' admiration for Dante's Divine Comedy. Throughout his career Lewis drew on the structure, themes, and narrative details of Dante's medieval epic to present his characters as spiritual pilgrims growing toward God. Dante's portrayal of sin and sanctification, of human frailty and divine revelation, are evident in all of Lewis's best work. Readers will see how a modern author can make astonishingly creative use of a predecessor's material - in this case, the way Lewis imitated and adapted medieval ideas about spiritual life for the benefit of his modern audience. Nine chapters cover all of Lewis's novels, from Pilgrim's Regress and his science-fiction to The Chronicles of Narnia and Till We Have Faces. Readers will gain new insight into the sources of Lewis's literary imagination that represented theological and spiritual principles in his clever, compelling, humorous, and thoroughly human stories.