Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis Hardcover – January 15, 2008

Michael Ward has written a stupendous book on the key underlying atmosphere of the seven Narnia tales. If you are really a C S Lewis aficionado this is for you. If you love Narnia but aren’t so academic Michael Ward has written a less rigorous version titled The Narnia Code. This version looks at the planetary “ influence” that orbits around the Chronicles. Ward also examines these planets in Lewis’s poetry, academic writing, letters, and also the Space Trilogy. The argument is careful and exhaustive. I am rereading the Chronicles and enjoying the trail of bread crumbs that Lewis left along the way that Ward has discovered.

Narnia lovers behold this book. Michael Ward's revelatory work is too edifying to ignore. For half a century we read (or had read to us) C.S. Lewis's magnificent Chronicles of Narnia. We love them because they captivate us.The series has a mystery, however. Disparateness clouds the atmosphere; a lack of thorough artistry found in Lewis's other fiction. Lewis's mind is consistently meticulous and lucid, a chief trait of the medieval authors he taught professionally, and therein lies the secret.More than allegory, yet nothing obviously more, Planet Narnia contends that Lewis made it so intentionally. Ward argues that each chronicle corresponds to one of the seven planets of medieval astrology. As a whole, they (the chronicles infused with the characteristic traits of the planets) create an atmosphere that is both honest to the human experience and consistent with the loveliness and sovereignty of Christ the Lord. The subtlety, an atmospheric quality, is consistent with Lewis's pneumatology, which maintains that unawareness of the Holy Spirit is a common condition in our human experience. Ward's case focuses on the peculiarities in The Chronicles, of which there are many, like the supposedly discordant appearance of St. Nicholas in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Suddenly they make sense - the jovial saint's laughter resonates like guilt forgiven.Many critics mistook Lewis for slopping together a menagerie of characters and plots without a guiding principle, argues Ward. Rather, it seems that a combination of an allegorical element teetering the brink of believability and dissatisfaction, a well-known pejorative judgment by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lewis's deliberate imaginative subtlety kept readers orbiting the astrological inner meaning without fully understanding that which pulled them.Planet Narnia is and claims to be a scholarly work. It is formidable, but as a reader I was pleasantly surprised by how cogently the argument runs. The Chronicles of Narnia are, after all, no Ulysses or Shakespearean play: the story is easy and the prose style is perfectly clear for everyone to enjoy. A work of literary criticism on such a matter-of-fact story lives or dies by its success in drawing out the facts or else garbling the matter. Ward excels in the former. Furthermore, Ward has not fluffed a Procrustean bed. Every proper literary question such as those of occasion, composition, and reception is considered thoughtfully and convincingly. Narnia is not scathed like the Planet Narnia cynics I know feared. Planet Narnia opens our eyes to something we already sensed: the kingly robes that the series has worn all along.Ward does not argue that The Chronicles of Narnia fail at spiritual edification unless you accept his conclusion. He affirms that Narnia animates our moral imaginations with the glories of landscape, adventure, and righteousness whether or not readers recognize what (or Who!) is acting on them. Planet Narnia is merely a vestibule between the shade of a purblind enjoyment and spiritual convalescence - a sort of enjoyment that draws you further in and higher up. Narnia is a spiritual place that ought to be discerned spiritually. Lewis might add: heavenly, for the heavens do the declaring.

This book's basic premise is that Lewis patterned the seven Narnia novels around the medieval geocentric view of the universe, with the seven planets circling the earth (Moon [Luna], Mercury, Venus, etc.). Each of the novels is linked with a different planet, with implicit and explicit nods to that planetary influence, including on how Aslan is presented.I found the arguments not only convincing but brilliantly argued.I can imagine that Michael Ward's study would appeal to readers who are coming from several different directions (maybe, for some of us, multiple directions simultaneously).To the casual reader of the Narnia novels, the book demonstrates that, even though the stories often seem rather loosely connected, there is an underlying bond that joins all seven. It would be fun to reread the novels with Ward's argument in mind, to ferret out the planetary language while enjoying the story.For the serious student of Lewis, Planet Narnia is an obvious must-read. Not only is the narrative unity of the works exposed, but Ward demonstrates how Lewis wove the planetary theme into the Space Trilogy as well as his other works, poetry especially.For readers like myself, who are at home in the biblical world, with its intertextuality and web of connections between the OT and NT, this book serves as a handy example of how this same intertextuality is at work in other literature. Lewis masterfully yet often obliquely kneaded together myth, history, Bible, and current events into a coherent whole in the Narnia series. Planet Narnia provides the key that unlocks that coherence. Likewise, when Christ is discovered to be the key that unlocks the unity of the OT and NT, one can begin with Genesis and perceive how masterfully and yet often obliquely Christ is present in the salvation story.Thanks to Michael Ward for giving us such a gem!

I read this on the Kindle.The book is marketed as a "Narnia Code" that unlocks the secret meaning of the Narnia series. I hope that helps them sell a large quantity, but I found the book to be much more than a gimmick. In fact it is a wonderful synthesis of facts, concepts, themes that I already knew to be a part of Lewis' worldview, as well as many that I had yet to discover. For example, it doesn't take long in reading Lewis' works to understand that he is a fan of "old ideas". I knew that his philosophical stances were much more rooted in Classicism than in Modernity. However, I did not know how deep his interest in Medieval Astrology went and how that affected his faith and thought.Ward does an excellent job of peeling back the layers and connecting the obscure to paint a very believable picture of the inner workings of Lewis' literary development.Even if Ward is not 100% correct in his conclusions, this book is worth reading. Along the way of proving his theory Ward offers the reader indisputable insight into the world of Lewis, and gives us a new way to look at all of Lewis' works, Narnia in particular.I would recommend that you read the Narnia series, then the Space Trilogy, BEFORE reading this book. You'll want to read other works by Lewis soon after.