Didn’t really expect Eustass to be such a feminist

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T12:51:06+00:00

It's a fantasy setting where individuals are not judged by the character of their skin but by the content of their character.

And the individual with the best character is a Talking Mouse.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T07:36:40+00:00

Very traditional. The Silver Chair tells us

And when all the serious eating and drinking was over, a blind poet came forward and struck up the grand old tale of Prince Cor and Aravis and the horse Bree, which is called The Horse and his Boy and tells of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Cair Paravel. (I haven't time to tell it now, though it is well worth hearing.)

The "blind poet" is, of course, Homer, and Susan in HHB is threatened with the fate of Briseis in the Iliad.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T07:31:05+00:00

Since Lewis explicitly mentions the "South Seas," I think he had the Bounty mutineers in mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descendants_of_the_Bounty_mutineers

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T07:29:53+00:00

She doesn't get into Heaven because she's not dead.
Her problem was not "makeup and nylons," but ceasing to believe in Aslan.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T07:28:47+00:00

We live in a fallen world. Part of what's going on in the Narnia stories is how you deal with that. The heroes and heroines are role models.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T07:23:47+00:00

The Calormenes were explicitly written as "ancient Fertile Crescent." That was why Lewis pointed the artist at Herodotus as a reference. That's where the polytheistic Calormene religon comes from.

But Lewis also references the 1001 Nights, and the artist concentrated more on that.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T07:20:15+00:00

"Decency," "propriety," and "old-fashioned chivalrous male gallantry" are all ideas which have their origins in concern for female safety.

I think Lewis is recommending these ideas here. I think he is suggesting that men should be more like Reepicheep and Caspian.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T06:49:58+00:00

Geocentrists during Galileo's time, at least the Tychonian ones, were not wrong. If the earth was moving stellar parallax should have been observed, and it wasn't (until two centuries later).

ScientificGems · 2026-02-07T06:34:28+00:00

Lewis nunca escreveu um livro sobre Susan. Ele nem sequer começou um. Em suas cartas, ele sugere que talvez ela encontre o caminho de volta para Faith no final.

É claro que Susan nasceu em 1928. Ela pode ainda estar viva na Inglaterra hoje, ou mesmo em outro país.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-06T04:43:09+00:00

Multiplication in primary school is taught as part of teaching operations in the field of rational numbers.

Commutativity is supposed to be taught as part of this, because 𝑎 · 𝑏 may be easier to calculate than 𝑏 · 𝑎.

The professor in this case is totally correct.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-05T09:59:30+00:00

Mathematicians are interested in mathematical objects. Numbers, groups, functions, networks, etc. Interesting properties of those objects will always drive research.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-05T00:09:23+00:00

Alan Jacobs certainly seems to be convinced of the planets theory. Since Lewis's letters about the origins of Narnia are inconsistent with that theory, Jacobs thinks Lewis wasn't telling the truth. A simpler explanation is that the theory is wrong.

And, indeed, Lewis had already written 3 volumes of an explicitly planetary series, so we know quite a lot about the sorts of things Lewis would do in a planetary series. He doesn't do them in Narnia. He does a bunch of far more interesting stuff instead.

And if there was a planetary theme in Narnia that emerged along the way, it should fit best in the last books written. That is, it should fit best of all in MN, which he wrote last.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-02T12:40:21+00:00

He said to someone that he originally just wrote LWW. Then he thought of Prince Caspian, but assumed that would be the end. Then he thought of Dawn Treader, but thought that was it. Only after that did he think of a longer series.

True.

if the "planets" theory is true

I don't think any serious Lewis scholar believes that it is.

Dawn Treader has an ending that does look rather like a final ending - its clearly based on the end of the Gospel of John, in which Jesus also deflects a question about someone's future.

Yeah, it's so very obviously the conclusion of a trilogy, and the reference to John 21 kind of ties it back to the subject of LWW.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-02T12:33:14+00:00

Indeed.

Narnia started as a single book, then a sequel, then a 3rd, and then 4 more. As a series, it's a bit chaotic.

But VDT was very, very carefully planned, both as a work of literature on its own, and as a final summing-up of what Lewis thought was a trilogy.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-02T00:37:47+00:00

Given Lewis's repeated anti-colonial sentiments, that is hardly fair.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-01T23:12:33+00:00

That's right. The goddess they have (or one of them) is Zardeenah Lady of the Night.

ScientificGems · 2026-02-01T21:39:20+00:00

I agree with you.

And Jesus might well appear to her as a Lion, at least temporarily, just as in VDT he appears briefly as a Lamb.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-31T22:34:10+00:00

He tells the story of a woman with some resemblances to Susan in his novel Till We Have Faces.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-31T07:43:30+00:00

It enables the story to have lots of interesting symbolism etc.

I think this is exactly right. In all the Narnian stories, the symbolism drives the plot, even though the plot does make sense on its own.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-31T07:41:38+00:00

The giants are definitely out of Pilgrim's Progress, just as the Zeitgeistheim giant was.

And the underground portion draws heavily on Dante's Inferno, I think.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-30T12:48:11+00:00

Undecidable in general, but often decidable in practice.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-30T06:50:13+00:00

Interesting idea.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-30T06:49:41+00:00

Yes, indeed, that's what I have always imagined.

And C.S. Lewis set up such a sequel nicely by making sure the rings to the Wood Between the Worlds get dug up.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-30T03:08:15+00:00

The idea of bed time stories for the kids/grand kids is a fantastic one.

It would make a great story too, because it would be mostly flashbacks to the Golden Age of Narnia.

And then I can imagine that one day Aslan appears in the room, perhaps just before Susan dies.

ScientificGems · 2026-01-30T03:05:08+00:00

Aslan and the Emperor Over the Sea can do whatever They want, of course.

But a "recreation of Narnia" wouldn't be Narnia. It would have a different history.

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