The Enclosed Garden in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia

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Works Cited

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Christopher, Joe. “Mount Purgatory Arises near Narnia.” Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R.      Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 23.2 (Spring    2001):              65-90.

Davidson, Clifford.  Ed.  The Iconography of Heaven. Early Drama, Art, and Music. Monograph Series 21.  Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1994.

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Khoddam, Salwa.  “Where Sky and Water Meet:  Christian Iconography in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”  Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 23.2 (Spring 2001):  36-52.

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Pitts, Mary Ellen.  “The Motif of the Garden in the Novels of J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and C. S. Lewis.”  Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 30 (Winter 1982):   3-6, 42.

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[1] Joe Christopher discusses the garden imagery mostly in relationship to Dante’s garden of Eden in Purgatorio and provides different details on Lewis’s garden in The Magician’s Nephew and John Milton’s Paradise Lost from those in my paper.  See Christopher, “Mount Purgatory Arises near Narnia”.  Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 23.2 (Spring 2001) 65-90.

[2] Scholars have also noted the motif of the enclosed garden in Lewis’s space trilogy (Downing 80; Pitts 3, 5).  In a sermon titled “The Grand Miracle” (1945), Lewis further outlines the religious meaning of seasons and refers to winter as death and spring and summer as Christ’s Resurrection (87-88).

[3] Unlike Diggory, Adam and Eve fail the test miserably.  But their temptation is more complex and perilous, and their tempter more subtle and guileful, appearing in the shape of a captivating Talking Beast.

[4] This section has been previously published:  see Salwa Khoddam, “Where Sky and Water Meet:  Christian Iconography in C.S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”  Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature 23.2 (Spring 2001) 36-52.

[5] For a lengthy discussion on Eustace’s “un-dragoning” by Aslan, see Wayne Martindale, Beyond Shadowlands:  C.S. Lewis on Heaven and Hell (Wheaton, Ill.:  Crossway Books, 2005) 106-108, 114-119.

[6] According to Lewis, Christ also works on many who do not know him.  In one of his letters, he writes, “I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god […] is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him” (Letters 247).  In like manner, Emeth, the Calormene in The Last Battle will be embraced by Aslan as one of his sons.

[7] On Lewis’s mysticism in The Chronicles of Narnia, see David C. Downing, Into the Region of Awe:  Mysticism in C.S. Lewis (Downers Grove, Ill.:  Intervarsity Press, 2005) 125-143.

[8]The leaves that quiver abundantly on every branch slide against each other as burnished silver”  (Ford 476).  The convergences between Lewis’s and the Pearl poet’s visions of the celestial gardens require more study, which I hope to complete in the future.  Derek Pearsall and Elizabeth Salter, Landscapes and Seasons of the Medieval World (London:  Paul Elek, 1973), provide a detailed study of the Pearl.