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Seven for Seven: The Voyage of the "Dawn Treader" and the Literary Tradition

2016; Mythopoeic Society; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

0146-9339

Thomas L. Martin,

Medieval Literature and History

FOR YEARS CRITICS HAVE SEEN THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS in The Chronicles of Narnia as an organizing principle across the seven books. Edmund's insatiable hunger for Turkish Delight sets the plot conflict in motion in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Jill's sloth causes her to forget the signs Aslan gives her and leads to the central difficulties she and Eustace face in The Silver Chair. But after those two vices align with two of the stories, Doris Myers notes, there is little agreement among the critics on how the rest of the stories complete the pattern (227). The same pattern-matching has been tried, she adds, between the stories and the Seven Cardinal Virtues and also the Seven Sacraments. More recently, Michael Ward has attempted to align the books with the seven planets of medieval cosmology, receiving more attention from the media for his thesis than uniform enthusiasm from Lewis scholars. (1) Undoubtedly these orders of seven are significant to Lewis as a Christian and a scholar of Medieval and Renaissance literature. And whether these elements are present in The Chronicles as schematically as some critics suggest, they are present in his stories in other ways. Vices and virtues will never be far away in fantasy stories like these made up of young heroes and their adventures in the marvelous realms where testing is a common occurrence and where they learn to overcome by strength of character. But if one were to look for the Seven Deadly Sins, or perhaps the Seven Virtues, among his stories, one might look in a more natural place than across the range of the novels and in such precise a fashion. Lewis admitted that he didn't think a second book would come after the first, or a third after the second. (2) I realize that critics like Ward offer counterarguments, but I will not rehearse arguments for or against these ideas here. Lewis's grand scheme is made clear by him in at least one important letter and elsewhere. (3) But as for the Seven Deadly Sins and Cardinal Seven Virtues, they can be found more clearly and explicitly among The Chronicles in another place. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is rich with allusion across the literary tradition, and a significant portion of the story is directly and discernably formed around the Seven Capital Sins and their opposing Virtues. To realize this is to shed light on the story as Lewis tells it. As we proceed, however, it is important to realize that the most direct one-to-one correspondence or diagrammatic precision in such matters of literary analysis is likely never desirable for the critic reading the work--nor for the author fashioning it in the first place. We should remember that Lewis writes for a modern audience, albeit in this case of children: but to understand Lewis's literary method and how he combines effective storytelling in a modern context with an allegory of ancient materials--for a contemporary readership that has exceeded a hundred million--is a key as valuable as any other in unlocking the meaning of his stories. If in a literary context how the story means is as important as what it means, then we do well to keep a literary method in mind as we explore the patterns. The reader following this third installment in Lewis's fantasy novels is presented with a number of different story elements, all of which cohere in the narrative as it emerges from the page, but also in a surplus of meaning well beyond. The sea voyage on which Caspian and his party embark, with its many fantastical adventures that call upon all their heroic resources, evokes Homer's Ulysses, a character who is actually named in the tale (261). Peter Schakel sees other analogues as well, including Aeneas, Huckleberry Finn, and many other predecessors (63). Elizabeth Hardy sees nautical motifs from The Faerie Queene. Charles Huttar sees the Celtic immram, the tale of a journey of fantastical adventures through various islands in search of the Otherworld. Robert Boenig sees The Quest of the Holy Grail, and Boenig and Ward see Mandeville's Travels. …