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While The Chronicles of Narnia is widely considered allegorical, C. S. Lewis explicitly stated that he did not write the seven-book series as an allegory (Mikalatos, Matt. “Neither Allegory nor Lion: Aslan and the Chronicles of Narnia.” Tor.com, 30 Oct. 2019). He instead considers the series a “supposal.” To Lewis, the ideas, concepts, and even people in an allegory have direct parallels to reality that permeate the entire literary work; the genre essentially transposes something factual (or taken to be factual) into symbolic form. By contrast, a supposal begins with an act of imagination—i.e., Lewis’s question, “What might Christ become like if there really were a world like Narnia, and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?” (Lewis, C. S. Quoted in “Neither Allegory nor Lion”). The relationship to reality is therefore both weaker and stronger than in allegory. On the one hand, the world and events of a supposal do not need to correspond exactly to those the reader knows. Parallels may exist (e.g., the Witch acting as the serpent in the Garden of Eden), but the story has its own internal logic that can deviate from that of the real world.
By C. S. Lewis
A Grief Observed
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Mere Christianity
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Out of the Silent Planet
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Perelandra
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Prince Caspian
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Surprised by Joy
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That Hideous Strength
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The Abolition of Man
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The Discarded Image
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The Four Loves
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The Great Divorce
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The Horse And His Boy
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The Last Battle
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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
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The Pilgrim's Regress
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The Problem of Pain
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The Screwtape Letters
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The Silver Chair
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The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
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Till We Have Faces
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Action & Adventure
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Challenging Authority
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Christian Literature
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Good & Evil
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Juvenile Literature
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Popular Study Guides
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Power
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Religion & Spirituality
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Required Reading Lists
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