The chronicles of Narnia : the patterning of a fantastic world

Written in an easy-to-read, accessible style by teachers with years of classroom experience, Masterwork Studies are guides to the literary works most frequently studied in high school. Presenting ideas that spark imaginations, these books help students to gain background knowledge on great literature useful for papers and exams. The goal of each study is to encourage creative thinking by presenting engaging information about each work and its author. This approach allows students to arrive at sound analyses of their own, based on in-depth studies of popular literature.

Each volume:

-- Illuminates themes and concepts of a classic text

-- Uses clear, conversational language

-- Is an accessible, manageable length from 140 to 170 pages

-- Includes a chronology of the author's life and era

-- Provides an overview of the historical context

-- Offers a summary of its critical reception

-- Lists primary and secondary sources and index

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Manlove (Univ. of Edinburgh), author of C.S. Lewis: His Literary Achievement (CH, Mar'88) and other books, has written an excellent thematic survey of C.S. Lewis's seven Narnia fantasies. He begins with praise of the books as revitalizing children's literature after the 1940s, opening that literature to important topics; he then traces most of the significant criticism on Lewis's books. The main critical work he misses, here and in his annotated bibliography, is Paul F. Ford's Companion to Narnia (3rd ed., 1986), with its thematic and other entries. Since Manlove discusses each book separately, one instance may show his approach: The Horse and His Boy (1954) is less fantastic and more locodescriptive than the other six; its themes--supported by examples by Manlove--are identity, pride and humility, relationship (or "growth in true society") and solitude, freedom, concealment, social hierarchy and equality, and free choice and providence. For a teenage classroom discussion, this is a valuable guide; and Manlove has a series of questions for younger children in the back of the volume. The book should be supplemented with Peter J. Schakel's Reading with the Heart (CH, Jun'80), an archetypal approach--as well as with Ford, mentioned above. Undergraduate; general. J. R. Christopher; Tarleton State University

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