how do I hate C. S. Lewis: let me count the ways...

[edenfalling]

I have decided that the standard map of the Eastern Ocean (and the Bight of Calormen, which, when is that ever mentioned in canon? why is it named for Calormen when most of its coastline is Archenland, Narnia, and the disorganized lands north of Narnia? I am so confused) is for shit. It does not make sense when put together with Drinian's account of the Dawn Treader's voyage given in ch. 2 of VDT. Note that he says they have sailed more than 400 leagues, which, if we go with the standard definition of a league being 3 nautical miles, would mean they've sailed about 1,400 standard miles -- which is roughly the distance from New York to Havana. Narnia is just not as big a country as it would need to be to create that kind of distance based on the implied map scale.

Also, the name "Lone Islands" tends to imply a group of islands that are ALONE. As in, way the hell out in the middle of the ocean, not bang up against the northern coast of Calormen. So I reject the map on linguistic grounds as well.

(This brought to you by my general frustration at C. S. Lewis and his world-building failures. And also by my nagging desire to write a story in which Narnia is NOT half so well pacified and integrated as Caspian would like to think, and Prunaprismia takes advantage of his year-plus absence to damn near usurp the throne in the name of her son, which Caspian et al discover when they return to the Lone Isles (and also discover that closing down the slave trade has increased the unrest and given Prunaprismia additional support) and then there are a few years of ugly civil war in which the Star's daughter gets to be awesome, and which might help explain why Caspian seems to be eighty-plus in SC while Rilian was apparently only a "very young knight" ten years before, though really that never has and never will make much sense, because Lewis could not be consistent and logical if his life depended on it, argh!!!)

Comments

[autumnia]

I wish Lewis was a bit more detailed with Narnian geography but when it comes to writing, I usually rely on the actual text than the maps. If there was nothing written or things were unclear, then I look to the maps to help try to figure where places are broadly located but not using them to scale. I do agree that Drinian has probably provided the most details we have about all the islands since we never visit them in the other books.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, I would always take the text over the maps, since I think the maps were drawn long after the fact and clearly do not match the text. Of course, the texts themselves are inconsistent in many places, but that is a separate issue.

Yeah, the islands are briefly mentioned at the start of SC, but we never see any of them again. Alas for lost opportunities!