Electives

Discovering Narnia: Religion and Imagination in C.S. Lewis’s Fantasy World

Literature

This course examines C.S. Lewis’s classic The Chronicles of Narnia from theological, philosophical, and literary perspectives in close dialogue with Michael Ward’s revolutionary and controversial Planet Narnia.

Taught by Dr. Jason Lepojärvi.

Runs 1/10-3/19/22.

Auditing: participate in readings and live class sessions, but no graded assignments and no course credit
Full course part-time: individual classes on a for-credit basis; you can later apply them toward a Certificate or Degree
Full course full-time: for-credit courses (at least four per term) toward our Certificate or M.Litt in Classical Protestantism

Description

This Literature/Elective course is taught by Dr. Jason Lepojärvi, and will run from January 10th through March 19th 2022. The syllabus is available here.

Few works of literature are more beloved amongst contemporary Christians than C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. And yet the seven books can seem, when we step back from them, a strange collection, perhaps even incoherent in their variety. After all, J.R.R Tolkien famously berated Lewis for including Father Christmas in the same book as a talking lion. Does it all fit together? Is there a “deeper magic” which makes sense of Lewis’s world? And, aside from Aslan’s obvious parallels with Christ, what is Lewis saying about Christianity?

This course will examine the The Chronicles of Narnia from theological, philosophical, and literary perspectives, in close dialogue with Michael Ward’s revolutionary and controversial Planet Narnia. Through weekly lectures, guided discussions of assigned texts, two Oxford-style interactive tutorials and essays, and two guest lectures by Dr. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson and Dr. Michael Ward, we explore religiously charged themes, such as myth, conversion, power, freedom, language, love, and death.

Dr. Jason Lepojärvi (Ph.D, University of Helsinki) is a Fellow of Thornloe University. He is also a former Research Fellow in Theology at Oxford University, a former Postdoctoral Scholar in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, and the former president of the Oxford C.S. Lewis Society. He is a member of the editorial board for The Journal of Inklings Studies. His research interests extend further to the philosophy of love, sex, and gender.

Online only, runs 10 weeks, meeting 2 hrs./wk. via Zoom. Students will also have the option for class discussion in the Davenant Common Room Discord server. Register to reserve your spot and schedule will be set after a poll of participating students; if the class time does not fit your schedule, you will be eligible for a full refund.
This is a graduate-level course. Although a BA is not a necessary pre-requisite for this course, students should come prepared to do graduate-level work.