The creative word and poetic visions of the world. The beginnings of an epic fantasy in C. S. Lewis

Abstract

The enormous popularity of the book series The Chronicles of Narnia by British author C. S. Lewis invites the study of the work´s artistic quality that forms part of the beginning of the epic fantasy; not only because it represents a milestone in literary history, but also because it remains an expression of fundamental human needs that, in the same manner, were found in post-war days of the twentieth century, as observed in the great questions of postmodernity. The crisis of the great stories generally expressed by religions and the cultural dissolution of major literary references produce a fertile ground for the emergence of literary works, such as The Chronicles of Narnia, and propose a vision of the world and a project for the future. In this paper we will analyze the artistic value of The Magician’s Nephew (1955), a book which opens the collection of children’s books, as a work that offers a poetic vision of the world with the Judeo-Christian religious background of creation.