Opening Children´s Imagination to the Theme of Death with The Chronicles of Narnia. In Children and Death
Abstract
After sketching the way in which myths and fairytales can form children's perception of reali-ty and prepare them for facing the most important existential themes, the paper will focus on the popular fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S.
Lewis. It will investigate how the stories are able to form the imagination of Children in order to make them receptive to seri-ous and often evaded topic of death and lead them subsequently to its theological interpreta-tion in light of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The paper will discuss particular examples from Narnian stories not only on literary level, but also with regard to the personal experience of their author as well as in the context of his theoretical writings. Last but not least, it will comment on Lewis's manner of communication with children, which is exempli-fied also by his letters written in response to his young readers.