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edenfallingI am trying to backtrack how I was introduced to Narnia. Cut to spare your f-list from my attempt to put an accurate chronology on my childhood.
The BBC did a 6-part serial production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1988, and I assume PBS bought the rights to broadcast it in America sometime between 1988 and 1991. I make this assumption because my family taped some version of that show off PBS and I am fairly sure I saw it before I read any of the books.
(I did not, incidentally, see the BBC's adaptations of Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or The Silver Chair... at least I don't think I did. It's possible that my parents may have taped The Silver Chair as well, but if they did, I have no memory whatsoever of watching it.)
I acquired a 7-volume set of the Chronicles of Narnia in spring of either 1990 or 1991. Probably 1991. My elementary school decided to do a sort of reading promotion contest called 'Read Around the World,' in which we had a giant Mercator projection of the globe painted on the outer wall of the library and every student was given a little badge with their name to move around on the map based on how much we read. We wrote one or two paragraph summaries of each book we read, and kept a cumulative page count. Every certain number pages let us move to the next continent, and if we kept reading after reaching the end of the world, we got little flags attached to our badges and started going around again. (I don't recall the exact number of pages for each move. I want to say it was 700, but that seems implausibly large for elementary school students. It was definitely at least 100 pages per move, though. Maybe I'm thinking 700 because that was the number of pages to circle the world?)
The contest ran for one, two, or three months. (As I said, I don't recall the exact details. If we needed only 100 pages per move, I bet the time limit was one month. If we needed more pages, the time limit was probably longer.) At the end of it, I had read around the world three times and change. The runner-up had managed about one and a half times. The really sad part is that I was only in second or third grade at the time. *headdesk*
Anyway, the prize was a boxed set of Narnia books. Since this was before 1994, they were ordered by publishing date rather than by internal chronology, for which I am grateful, because I think publishing order makes much more sense from a... mmm... world-discovery perspective, shall we say. It was one of the best prizes I have ever won in my life. (The only better one, really, was the free trip to Germany. *grin*) I lost the box somewhere along the way, but still have those same seven books, and expect to keep them until they fall apart (at which time I might buy hardcover editions as replacements, unless the entire world has switched to electronic books by then, in which case I will be sad).
So I was introduced to Narnia when I was 8 or 9 years old, which is about the best age for a first encounter with a lot of classic fantasy series -- you're old enough to take them seriously, but not so old that you've lost your sense of wonder or your ease at incorporating new things into a constantly adapting worldview. (Then again, I tend to assume that people's reading skills are higher than they often are, so maybe 11 or 12 is a better age, on average.) And while the series did not miraculously make me Christian (I am a cheerful UU agnostic with vague pagan leanings and a dilettante interest in Buddhist philosophy), it did shape some of my bedrock assumptions about the world.
For example, there is a passage at the end of The Horse and His Boy where King Lune explains the nature of kingship to Cor:
"The king's under the law, for it's the law makes him a king. Hast no more power to start away from thy crown than any sentry from his post.... [This] is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land."
which is amplified later in The Magician's Nephew when Aslan asks Frank a series of questions:
"Well," said Aslan, "can you use a spade and a plough and raise food out of the earth? ... Can you rule these creatures kindly and fairly, remembering that they are not slaves like the dumb beasts of the world you were born in but Talking Beasts and free subjects? ... And would you bring up your children and grandchildren to do the same? ... And you wouldn't have favourites either among your own children or among the other creatures or let any hold another under or use it hardly? ... And if enemies came against the land (for enemies will arise) and there was war, would you be the first in the charge and the last in the retreat? ... Then," said Aslan, "you will have done all that a King should do."
Setting aside the bit about leading from the front of the army (which is logistically impossible these days, and perhaps not the best strategy in any case), this is more or less my idea of what a responsible leader ought to be. And even if I don't take the military bit literally, the idea that a ruler should suffer the same consequences as the ruled -- should not be cushioned and sheltered by his or her rank, nor excused from common standards of morality -- is true and powerful.
And I got that, among other places, from Narnia. :-)
The BBC did a 6-part serial production of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1988, and I assume PBS bought the rights to broadcast it in America sometime between 1988 and 1991. I make this assumption because my family taped some version of that show off PBS and I am fairly sure I saw it before I read any of the books.
(I did not, incidentally, see the BBC's adaptations of Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, or The Silver Chair... at least I don't think I did. It's possible that my parents may have taped The Silver Chair as well, but if they did, I have no memory whatsoever of watching it.)
I acquired a 7-volume set of the Chronicles of Narnia in spring of either 1990 or 1991. Probably 1991. My elementary school decided to do a sort of reading promotion contest called 'Read Around the World,' in which we had a giant Mercator projection of the globe painted on the outer wall of the library and every student was given a little badge with their name to move around on the map based on how much we read. We wrote one or two paragraph summaries of each book we read, and kept a cumulative page count. Every certain number pages let us move to the next continent, and if we kept reading after reaching the end of the world, we got little flags attached to our badges and started going around again. (I don't recall the exact number of pages for each move. I want to say it was 700, but that seems implausibly large for elementary school students. It was definitely at least 100 pages per move, though. Maybe I'm thinking 700 because that was the number of pages to circle the world?)
The contest ran for one, two, or three months. (As I said, I don't recall the exact details. If we needed only 100 pages per move, I bet the time limit was one month. If we needed more pages, the time limit was probably longer.) At the end of it, I had read around the world three times and change. The runner-up had managed about one and a half times. The really sad part is that I was only in second or third grade at the time. *headdesk*
Anyway, the prize was a boxed set of Narnia books. Since this was before 1994, they were ordered by publishing date rather than by internal chronology, for which I am grateful, because I think publishing order makes much more sense from a... mmm... world-discovery perspective, shall we say. It was one of the best prizes I have ever won in my life. (The only better one, really, was the free trip to Germany. *grin*) I lost the box somewhere along the way, but still have those same seven books, and expect to keep them until they fall apart (at which time I might buy hardcover editions as replacements, unless the entire world has switched to electronic books by then, in which case I will be sad).
So I was introduced to Narnia when I was 8 or 9 years old, which is about the best age for a first encounter with a lot of classic fantasy series -- you're old enough to take them seriously, but not so old that you've lost your sense of wonder or your ease at incorporating new things into a constantly adapting worldview. (Then again, I tend to assume that people's reading skills are higher than they often are, so maybe 11 or 12 is a better age, on average.) And while the series did not miraculously make me Christian (I am a cheerful UU agnostic with vague pagan leanings and a dilettante interest in Buddhist philosophy), it did shape some of my bedrock assumptions about the world.
For example, there is a passage at the end of The Horse and His Boy where King Lune explains the nature of kingship to Cor:
"The king's under the law, for it's the law makes him a king. Hast no more power to start away from thy crown than any sentry from his post.... [This] is what it means to be a king: to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land."
which is amplified later in The Magician's Nephew when Aslan asks Frank a series of questions:
"Well," said Aslan, "can you use a spade and a plough and raise food out of the earth? ... Can you rule these creatures kindly and fairly, remembering that they are not slaves like the dumb beasts of the world you were born in but Talking Beasts and free subjects? ... And would you bring up your children and grandchildren to do the same? ... And you wouldn't have favourites either among your own children or among the other creatures or let any hold another under or use it hardly? ... And if enemies came against the land (for enemies will arise) and there was war, would you be the first in the charge and the last in the retreat? ... Then," said Aslan, "you will have done all that a King should do."
Setting aside the bit about leading from the front of the army (which is logistically impossible these days, and perhaps not the best strategy in any case), this is more or less my idea of what a responsible leader ought to be. And even if I don't take the military bit literally, the idea that a ruler should suffer the same consequences as the ruled -- should not be cushioned and sheltered by his or her rank, nor excused from common standards of morality -- is true and powerful.
And I got that, among other places, from Narnia. :-)
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Date: 2009-03-09 11:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-10 06:23 am (UTC)