A Reader's Guide to Caspian: A Journey into C. S. Lewis's Narnia

by Leland Ryken, Marjorie Lamp Mead

Back into Narnia "Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy, and it has been told in another book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe how they had a remarkable adventure." So begins C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian and the children's second remarkable escapade into Narnia--a Narnia known but unknown, looking much different than it did in their first adventure. C. S. Lewis scholar Marjorie Lamp Mead and literary specialist Leland Ryken work their own magic to take you deep into Narnia once again, providing a guided tour of Prince Caspian that highlights characters, setting and framework, with rich background details to enhance your reading of the story. The authors also shed light on Lewis's imagination and literary forms, and include a brief biography of Lewis himself. Added questions for discussion and reflection make this the perfect companion to Prince Caspian for book discussion groups. Following the pattern set in their Reader's Guide Through the Wardrobe, Mead and Ryken help you, like the Pevensie children, enter Narnia again in a new way and find it to be an even more surprising place than you ever imagined.

172 pages, Paperback

First published March 30, 2008

About the author

Dr. Ryken has served on the faculty of Wheaton College since 1968. He has published over thirty books and more than one hundred articles and essays, devoting much of his scholarship to Bible translations and the study of the Bible as literature. He served as Literary Chairman for the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible and in 2003 received the distinguished Gutenberg Award for his contributions to education, writing, and the understanding of the Bible.

He is the father of Philip Graham Ryken

Reviews

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd previously read (and reviewed) Ryken and Mead's A Reader's Guide Through the Wardrobe, and this second volume about Prince Caspian being much the same, my opinion of it is very similar. The first half of the book is a chapter-by-chapter breeze through Caspian, through the lens (unsurprisingly) of Northrop Frye's emphasis on literary archetypes. As with the first Reader's Guide, I wanted more detail on the backgrounds and influences of different elements of Lewis's story, but the overview here is fairly basic. The reader is often told how predictably the story is preceding, based on expectations from literary archetypes.

What makes this book better, I think, than the previous volume is the inclusion of a couple of very helpful chapters as appendices. The first is an excellent guide to understanding allegory in literature. The Narnia stories live with a kind of double identity, in which they are obviously related in some way to Christianity, yet Lewis himself spoke out against seeing them as allegory. Ryken and Mead thoughtfully explain the multiple meanings and nuances of the word "allegory," and then guide the reader toward what I feel is a good way to understand Narnia. In fact, I really wish that a lot of Christians could read just this chapter, to combat the prevalent idea that literature can only be of value to the Christian reader when all of the details of a story line up explicitly with Christian beliefs, doctrine, or biblical examples. Ryken and Mead recommend a way of reading that reduces the stress that such a reader might experience in trying so desperately to relate each element of the story to something else in the Christian life. This appendix is followed by a chapter on "the Christian vision of Prince Caspian, which is a very good overview of the ways in which the story is understood from a theological or biblical worldview.

One rather odd appendix is simply a collection of extracts from reviews of the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It's sort of amusing, but I don't know why it's in the book.

This Reader's Guide is clearly in the "academics trying to reach out to the common person" domain--a kind of writing that is often difficult for academics to craft successfully. The temptation is, on the one side, overwhelming detail for the general readership, or, on the other side, an oversimplified, condescending tone. Ryken and Mead generally do a fine job of this kind of writing, though the tone struck me at times as verging toward that condescending tone. They fall prey to the academic's favorite writing tic: beginning too many sentences with "Indeed." But otherwise their writing is free from lit-crit jargon.

My biggest criticism of the book is its relentlessly positive, almost worshipful, view of C.S. Lewis. I graduated from Wheaton College, and I well remember the reverence that Lewis enjoys on campus, not just in the English department (and the seemingly irresistible pull on Wheaton literature faculty to write books about Lewis: Wayne Martindale, Rolland Hein, and Alan Jacobs, for example, included in that group). I love Lewis, but certainly he has his quirks and oddities, and things that I can't celebrate or unquestioningly enjoy to the full. Reading Ryken and Mead, however, the reader might assume Lewis could do no wrong. It somehow makes me distrust the writing, just slightly, when I feel that the authors are giving me a thoroughly one-sided, positive view on any person or topic, and that was the case as I was reading this book.

As I mentioned in my previous review, it's too bad that this book was published just before Michael Ward's brilliant Planet Narnia, as I find that book to be a most extremely helpful interpretive guide for the Narnia series--so much so that now when I read any interpretation of Narnia that doesn't incorporate Ward's planetary framework, it seems like it's really missing something big.

[Alex of Yoe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a commentary on C. S. Lewis's Prince Caspian from a literary perspective. It gives a history of the book, chapter-by-chapter analysis, comments on various themes, and a brief synopsis of Lewis's life. On the whole, I found it very dry and technical. It tends to be somewhat repetitive as well, and the literary critique does take some of the "magic" out of the book. However, I did appreciate the historical tidbits and trivia about Lewis and the writing of Prince Caspian. The appendix on the Lion, Witch, and Wardrobe film seems a bit out of place, though. Overall, if you are a teacher or planning on leading a group study on Prince Caspian, this book offers a lot of good ideas and even discussion questions to consider. But, for the casual reader, it might be just a little too scholarly and technical to really enjoy. If you're interested in literary criticism, you'll like this book. If you don't, skip it.

[Adrianalima · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una linda historia con un final inesperado pero su trama es muy concreto