Journey into Narnia
(The Journey of Our Lives)

(Hope Publishing House, 1997)
Illustrations by Tim Kirk and Patrick Wynne.

I completed the first half of this book (The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land) in 1957, and completed the second half (Exploring the Narnian Chronicles) exactly 40 years later, in 1997. In the meantime, the Chronicles of Narnia had become one of the most beloved sets of books in the world.

Foreward: C.S. Lewis as Children's Author

"The Iliad is great because all of life is a battle; the Odyssey is great because all of life is a journey."
--G.K. Chesterton

C.S. Lewis never tired of rereading the Iliad and the Odyssey. One reason the Narnian Chronicles are great is that like the Iliad and the Odyssey they are about life's battle and life's journey.

Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek about the time of the first Olympics, circa 800 B.C. Next, Virgil wrote an epic titled the Aeneid in Latin circa 20 B.C. and intentionally echoed Homer. (Some of the very earliest Christians probably read at least part of Virgil's Aeneid, because it was extremely popular in Rome in the days of Christ and his followers.)

Dante wrote the first Christian epic, the Divine Comedy, in ordinary Italian in about A.D. 1300. Then Milton wrote the second great Christian epic, Paradise Lost, in English in about A.D. 1660. (Lewis knew and loved both of these.) All five epics-the Iliad and the Odyssey, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, and Paradise Lost- were works of genius that have delighted multitudes of readers.

Lewis's first career ambition was to publish booklength story-poems like those, with grand themes, lofty language, and bits of humor.

Incredible as it seems, throughout the 2,500-year span from 800 B.C. to A.D. 1660, when our five great epics were produced, there was no such thing as a children's book. There were no children's writers at all. People told stories to children, but no one wrote a storybook for them to enjoy until 250 years ago. Books for children came along like an afterthought in the book world.

Books for children also came along like an afterthought in the writing career of C.S. Lewis. He had always loved children's stories, and in middle age he suddenly started writing them. It is interesting to see how he included key elements of the great epics in his books for children: grand themes, voyages or struggles with profound consequences, and immensities of cosmic history.

In other ways Lewis's overwhelming success as a writer of children's books resembles the story of Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll. (Lewis Carroll published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.) Both C. S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll were brilliant Oxford professors who had no children of their own. Both of them were devoutly Christian and much concerned with ultimate realities as well as with ethics and character. Both were full of fun. Both wrote about people tumbling or stumbling into another world. And both meant for their children's stories to be read by adults just as much as children.

Book Content

Here are the five chapters of the first half of this book:

1. Making Pictures
2. Spoiled Goodness: Lewis's Concept Of Nature
3. The Coming of the Lion: Lewis's Concept of God
4. Possible Gods and Goddeses: Lewis's Concept of Humankind
5. Weaving a Spell.

The second half of the book has seven chapters, one for each of the seven Chronicles with a variety of ideas for exploration.

There are three special bonuses at the end of this book.

1. "The Aunt and Amabel" a 1908 fantasy by Edith Nesbit, gave Lewis the idea of the wardrobe that he used over forty yers later in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Here is the explanation for that, and -- even better -- Nesbit's complete story.

2. "Narnia: The Domain of Lewis's Beliefs" by M. A. Manzalaoui is a memorable tribute from a student of Lewis's (now a retired professor himself) who evidently triggered The Horse and His Boy and was himself the inspiration for Emeth in The Last Battle.

3. The Map of Narnia by Tim Kirk is a two-page pen-and-ink drawing that faithfully depicts many details of the Chronicles.

Tim Kirk, a longtime mythopoeic illustrator, also provided the cover painting and most of the interior pen-and-ink drawings.

Book Commendations

"As one who loves the Narnia chronicles and reads them at least once a year, if not more often. I was surprised at how much Journey Into Narnia brought out that I hadn't thought of before... The next time I venture into the land of Narnia I will have this information with me to enable me to enjoy the books even more, if tat is possible. Journey Into Narnia is a reference tool that would be an asset to anyone who is reading the Narnia chronicles for the first or the fiftieth time."
--CANADIAN C. S. LEWIS JOURNAL

"Part One approaches the Narnia books through an examination of Lewis's broad ideas on how to express theological truth through story.... [Part Two] could be said to resemble the feast Coriakin provided in Dawn Treader, where everyone got their favorite thing to eat. There is certainly something that will appeal to every Narnia reader in this [second] section."
--THE LAMP-POST

"Educators who use the Narnia chronicles in their classrooms, or even those adults who are just fans of the series, should find this book of interest."
--BOOKLIST

"Journey Into Narnia by Kathryn Lindskoog puts the entire theological picture of the creative writings of C. S. Lewis into perspective... For the serious readers who follow these writings of Lewis, the book is a marvel..."
--THE LUTHERAN LAYMAN

When C. S. Lewis read the first half in 1957, he wrote to me,"[The Lion of Judah in Never-Never Land] arrived yesterday and I read it at once. You are in the center of the target everywhere. For one thing, you know my work better than anyone I've met: certainly better than I do myself. (I've no recollection whatever of The World's Last Night and can't imagine what it was about!) But secondly you (alone of the critics I've met) realize the connection or even the unity of all the books-scholarly, fantastic, theological-and make me appear a single author not a man who impersonates half a dozen authors which is what I seem to most. This wins very high marks indeed. . . ."

When the first half was first published in 1973, Edmund Fuller wrote in the WALL STREET JOURNAL "An excellent exposition of the sinewy theology that underlies the Narnia tales."

In his 1993 book The Chronicles of Narnia, Colin Manlove of the University of Edinburgh wrote of the first half "For the main books on The Chronicles of Narnia we can start with Kathryn Lindskoog... Lindskoog's success is in enriching and deepening our understanding of the implications of the Narnia stories.... It is small wonder that C. S. Lewis valued this book."