Platonic Shadows in C. S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles
As a literary critic, science fiction writer, Christian apologist, and creator of the Chronicles of Namia, in the last several decades C. S. Lewis has attained a reputation and following enviable in size and amazing in diversity. In many ways the quiet Oxbridge professor's achievements have assumed an air of authority, an aura of credibility, difficult to explain; Lewis, after all, is not an "apologist" in the same sense as Merton, nor a critic with a comprehensive system such as McLuhan. He is not, likewise, a fiction writer whose "science" background even begins to parallel that of Asimov, whose characterizations approach those of Faulkner, whose ethical dilemmas rival Greene's, and whose epic sweep is as broad as Tolkien's.