'Planet Narnia' lecture uncovers hidden meaning in C.S. Lewis’ work

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
April 9, 2008

Michael Ward, a noted C. S. Lewis author and speaker from Cambridge, England, will present the lecture “Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis” at Texas State University-San Marcos Tuesday, April 15.

The lecture will be at 12:30 p.m. in Centennial Hall, room GO2.  The lecture is free and open to the public.

“Dr. Ward presents a convincing and captivating argument for his discovery of this never-before-identified hidden code in the Narnia chronicles,” said Steven Beebe, chair of the Department of Communication Studies, who also teaches a course about Lewis and communication.

Planet Narnia, Ward’s new ground-breaking book, suggests that there is an underlying key to all seven of C. S. Lewis’s books comprising the Chronicles of Narnia.  Using one of Lewis’s early poems along with meticulous research, Ward’s lecture will describe how he broke the code to identify the hidden meaning in Lewis’s classic work.  Lewis secretly constructed the Chronicles so that in each book the plot-line, the details and lion-king Aslan all serve to communicate an underlying theme.

Ward will identify the underlying theme of the Chronicles of Narnia and answer questions about why Lewis’s Narnia stories continue to be so popular among readers worldwide.   The second published Narnia book, Prince Caspian, will be released as a major motion picture from Walt Disney Studies on May 16.

The lecture is sponsored by Texas State’s Department of Communication Studies and the Department of English.  For additional information contact Beebe in the Department of Communication Studies at (512) 245-2165.