Lost in Adaptation: Aslan’s Divinity and the Purpose of Real Pain in Narnia Versus Fantasy Film

Milton, Spenser and The Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for the C. S. Lewis Novels Rebecca Davies (bio) Milton, Spenser and The Chronicles of Narnia: Literary Sources for the C. S. Lewis Novels. By Elizabeth Baird Hardy. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2007. As Elizabeth Baird Hardy acknowledges in her introduction, the manifold literary sources for C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia have provided many critics of children's literature with fertile material for academic analysis. In this detailed and scholarly study, Hardy examines the ways in which Lewis echoes and references various aspects of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queen and John Milton's Paradise Lost, while never losing sight of the manner in which Lewis interweaves these elements with both Christian spirituality and a consciousness of more secular twentieth-century cultural references, such as Disney and Father Christmas. Hardy acknowledges the diverse influences involved in the creative process of a writer, touching on the influence Lewis's fellow writers in the Oxford-based group "The Inklings" may have had on his work, particularly the fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien, and occasionally referring the reader to influential biographical incidents. Divided into five distinct sections, the study employs close analysis of specific examples to demonstrate how Spenserian and Miltonic literary tropes inform Lewis's treatment of characterization and geographical setting. Hardy examines the influence of courtly and biblical depictions of evil in feminine form, positive female characters, evil in mortal men, monsters, and "misled" repentant protagonists on Lewis's Chronicles, she also compares comparing the geographical settings of Narnia and its predecessors. In addition, Hardy explores and compares the spiritual and theological standpoints of Lewis and his source writers. Meticulously referenced and supported, Hardy's close examination provides more than just detailed evidence to substantiate her claim for the significance of these two particular literary sources for Lewis's Chronicles; she provides a convincing explanation for Lewis's use of courtly tradition beyond his academic admiration for his sources and a subconscious referencing of favorite literary works. In her discussion of Lewis's treatment of sinful women in chapter 1, Hardy identifies the difficulty faced by Lewis in representing sins of the flesh. By employing recognizable courtly signifiers for sinful women, Hardy argues, Lewis avoids explicit references to lasciviousness in a work for children, a topic touched upon again in chapter 2's discussion of monstrous giants with huge, unnatural, gastronomic appetites. The sensory temptations that the juvenile protagonists find it difficult to resist are presented in the form of comfort—warm baths and beds, good food, and nice clothes. The fantasy genre, Hardy argues, provided Lewis with a form of literature in which the dangers of evil could be represented to children without being too frightening. Less convincingly, and seemingly motivated by her own academic admiration for Lewis, in chapter 2 Hardy employs the justification of courtly [End Page 400] tradition as an explanation for Lewis's negative depiction of the "dark" Calormenes. Hardy's veneration of Lewis, as a writer and a theologian, occasionally leads her to try and defend him against any criticism, and her vindication of Lewis on this point is not a completely persuasive exoneration of him from accusations of racism. However, Hardy's defense of Lewis against allegations of misogyny in chapter 3 is more compelling and more comprehensively supported. She cites Spenser's female warrior, Britomart, a brave yet feminine woman, as the ideal template for Lewis's female warriors. Hardy's emphasis that all of the texts discussed were intended to be allegorical, including the Chronicles—she stresses on a number of occasions that Lewis never intended Aslan to "equal Christ; rather he represents how Christ might appear in a country like Narnia" (112)—provides an explanation for the virgin/whore dichotomy that appears to afflict the representation of many female characters in all the texts, "[s]ubtle character shadings are not suitable for allegory, particularly when characters must represent idealized images of concepts such as chastity and temperance" (101). Chapter 4 examines the roots of Lewis's representation of the geography of Narnia and also addresses the ongoing debate regarding the order the books should be read in—either...

Of C. S. Lewis’s seven novels comprising The Chronicles of Narnia (1950–1956), the film adaptations thus far include The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Adamson, 2005), Prince Caspian (Adamson, 2008), and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Apted, 2010), with further adaptations under consideration. The first film, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, was the most successful of the three, its total worldwide gross of $745,013,115 currently standing at 44 in all-time, worldwide box-office rankings, while it was the third worldwide highest-grossing film of 2005.1 It was also nominated for three Academy awards, winning one for Best Makeup. Conversely, Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader fared moderately, currently ranking at 144 and 146 respectively in all-time top-grossing box office.2 Like The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter film franchises, The Chronicles of Narnia films have undoubtedly benefitted from the novels’ success, Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe having sold in excess of 85 million copies.3 Since the novels were written in the 1950s, the films offer opportunities for nostalgic revisitation by older audiences, who read the books as children, as well as interest for new readers. Moreover, the first adaptation in 2005 followed the final episode of The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2003) and was released concurrent to the Harry Potter films, arguably tapping into an audience demographic that was receptive to the fantasy epic.

Reviewed by: Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood: Transforming Children’s Literature into Film by Robyn McCallum Dr. Haifeng Hui (bio) Robyn McCallum. Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood: Transforming Children’s Literature into Film. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Robyn McCallum’s monograph Screen Adaptations and the Politics of Childhood: Transforming Children’s Literature into Film is an exciting contribution to the area of adaptation studies. Although, as McCallum notes in her introduction, “texts produced for children and teenagers are late to arrive to the ballroom of film and adaptation studies” (3), the twenty-first century nevertheless has witnessed an increasing number of excellent studies of film adaptations of children’s literature. To this end, McCallum’s book productively calls attention to how film adaptations variously remain faithful to, distort, or resist the themes and underpinnings of both classic and lesser-known works of children’s literature. The focus of her book, then, is how key elements of ideology, such as gender politics, culture wars, and notions of childhood, migrate to the new medium of film and undergo changes that are imposed by different social factors such as dominant “Hollywood aesthetic” and national identity. The book’s opening chapter recounts the historical development of adaptation studies by calling attention to the pioneering works of Linda Hutcheon, Brian McFarlane, Robert Stam, Thomas Leitch, James Naremore, and other scholars. It serves as an illuminating introduction for any reader who wants to explore adaptation studies in general and film adaptations in particular. Following the trend toward cultural and ideological contexts of adaptation away from fidelity debates, as proposed by the above scholars, McCallum’s interests encompass the way concepts of childhood are constructed and mediated in the new media and the “signifying practices through which viewers and readers [End Page 305] are positioned” (22). The following chapters are organized around key literary and film genres: classic texts, carnivalesque texts, radically intertextual and/or experimental texts, fantasy and magic realism, and cross-cultural adaptations. They explore the subtleties of film adaptation of children’s literature in its rich historical, social, and especially political contexts. McCallum’s second chapter examines film adaptations of three classic novels that span the first two golden ages of children’s literature: Treasure Island and Chronicles of Narnia. Citing Marah Gubar’s contention that Treasure Island can be read as an anti-adventure and anti-imperialist text, McCallum focuses on the ambivalences and ambiguities within Stevenson’s novel and how they are dealt with in various film adaptations, such as the 1972 Treasure Island (directed by John Hough and Andrew White), the 1999 Treasure Island (directed by Peter Rowe), and the 2011 television series Treasure Island (directed by Steve Barron). In Stevenson’s novel, there is a double-voice between the retrospective, older and wiser narrator Jim and the experiencing focalizer Jim (more naïve), which creates a central ambivalence. Besides, the “gentleman/pirate” hierarchy remains ambiguous and is finally inverted. Most of the film versions are rather conservative, choosing to oversimplify “the classist, imperialist and anti-imperialist metanarratives underpinning that story”(48), but some have kept and even highlighted the complexities and ambiguities of the novel, such as the 2011 Baron version and the 2011 BBC production. Also featuring children protagonists displaced into an “adult” world where they must take on adult roles, the Narnia series poses very different challenges to directors inasmuch the novels are often under-plotted and under-characterized, making it difficult to conform to film audience’s expectations of large-scale spectacular and epic aesthetic. Besides, the novels are metafictive in that the Narnia world and the frame fictional “real” world have different degrees of “reality,” which draws the readers’/audience’s attention to their status as fiction and artifice. The novels are also rich in their historical meanings, alluding to the Cold War context of a post–World War II Britain. However, the Disney film series adaptations directed by Andrew Adamson are aimed more at commercial success and are live-action-oriented and blockbuster in style. Adamson adds long action sequences and plots to “pad-out” the thin narrative, diluting what McCallum calls “Lewis’ pervasive and unquestioning sense of morality and allegorical emphasis...

The article deals with certain eschatological motives originating from the books of the Old Testament in C.S. Lewis’ fantasy fiction (the chronicle «The Last Battle», the book which concludes his famous series «The Chronicles of Narnia»). The author makes an attempt to give the characteristic of the role the Old Testament eschatological myths play in the text.

Many adolescents are drawn to the fantasy, science fiction and urban fantasy genres (movies and books), genres whose main characters include witches, wizards, vampires, ghosts, angels, demons, aliens and various other supernatural beings and events. Books and movies such as The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings (film series), Harry Potter (film series), X-Files, Twilight (film series), Star Wars (film series), and so on, are not only fervently consumed by some adolescents but have also, in some instances, been sacralised by adolescents (see Hopper 2005:116, McAvan 2012:5–10, Kirby 2013:2). In this article it will be argued that the reason for this, is that adolescents while questioning their identities and exploring their spiritualties, need a ‘safe spiritual space’ for this journey, one which may be related as something akin to what Berger termed the ‘sacred canopy’ where order can keep chaos at bay (Berger 1967: 51). This article will build on a lived theology perspective of how the divine can be experienced in the sources offered by popular culture texts that may become a ‘sacred canopy’ under which the adolescents can express their spiritual journeys.This article hopes to contribute to the facilitation of more conversations taking place amongst parents, pastors and teachers on the importance of allowing adolescents more freedom in what movies and books they are allowed to see and read. These conversations may also be employed by pastors, parents and teachers as conversation openers with adolescents who are often reluctant to open up about topics that they find difficult to discuss. Osmer and Salazar-Newton (2014:70) encourage the church to ‘think of ways it can take advantage of the interest of children and youth in fantasy literature,’ on their spiritual life journeys.

Since the late 1970s the dominant genre of Hollywood blockbusters has been fantasy, and it is not hard to see why. Science fiction extravaganzas, comic book adaptations, and epic series like Star Wars (1977-2005), Harry Potter (2001 ongoing), The Chronicles of Narnia (2005 ongoing) and The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) appeal internationally to the crucial teenage demographic; encourage fannish absorption in their expandable universes; showcase advances in special effects; and lend themselves readily to sequels, spin-offs and other commercially essential tie-ins. Although Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which inspired the continuing wave of fantasy, were original stories, fantasy films nowadays more usually derive from pre-existing novels, films, comic books, and video games with some built-in guarantee of audience recognition and cult interest. But the process is not one of simple “adaptation.” A film like The Lord of the Rings is a starting place as much as an end product of adaptation: just one reference point in a matrix of intertextual relations created by synergic cross-promotion. Video games, graphic and literary novelizations, CD soundtracks, multiple Director's Cuts and DVD versions, prequels, sequels, and franchises - such ostensibly secondary productions, included among what Gerard Genette called “paratexts,” not only extend the boundaries of contemporary Hollywood fantasy films but also increasingly determine their form and narrative.

The article is devoted to the study of human metaphysical experience through cinema art. The material of the study is widely known fantasy films (“The Lord of the Rings”, “The Matrix”, “Harry Potter”, “The Chronicles of Narnia”, “Avatar”), in which the sacral space is realized as a magical fairy tale or a dream, and the hero acting in it is identified with the concept of “soul” or “consciousness”. The aim of the study is to semantically and cognitively analyze the visual image of transition through death, which is offered to the viewer by cinematography, and to model the director’s concepts included in it. The author’s concept of transition is based on the works of M. Eliade, A. van Gennep, C.G. Jung, M.P. Hall and is revealed as a multi-phase process of soul transformation in the conditions of spiritual or perceptual crisis. It is established that the transition scenario in the films considered includes an “entry point” into another world, a series of initiations and an “exit point”. In this context, death and resurrection are the climactic phase and have different symbolic connotations, their essence depending on the prototype that the hero imitates. As it has been revealed, the imitation of cyclical forces of nature (solar, agrarian deities) by contemporary directors is interpreted by them as a long stage of soul maturation, which is no longer opposed to, but naturally precedes the imitation of the “divine archetype” (in the Christian tradition, Christ the Saviour). The axis of transition from forced submission to the endless cycle of renewal to the evolutionary stage of spiritual maturity is the act of “awakening” expressed in the willingness to voluntarily sacrifice oneself out of love and compassion for others. Death and resurrection in this case manifest the metaphysical transformation of the soul aspect into the spiritual one. At the same time, in the process of studying the film material, a tendency of a transgressive nature was detected, namely the replacement of the concept “soul” by the concept “brain”. As a result of identifying the functions of the human brain with the functions of a computer in the mental space, there is a danger of substitution of the divine image by artificial intelligence, which can provoke the blocking of the channel “soul – spirit” and the involutionary turn from spirit to matter.

This investigation focuses on C.S. Lewis's and J.R.R. Tolkien's contrasting views of art and imagination, which are key to understanding and interpreting their fantasy works, providing insight into their goals, themes, and techniques, as well as an appreciation of the value and impact of their mythologies. Most scholarship about J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis describes their shared faith and academic interests or analyzes each writer's fantasy works. War of the Fantasy Worlds: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on Art and Imagination is the first to focus solely on their contrasting concepts of fantasy. The authors' views of art and imagination, the book shows, are not only central to understanding the themes, value, and relevance of their fantasy fiction, but are also strikingly different. Understanding the authors' thoughts about fantasy helps us better understand and appreciate their works. Yet, this book is not a critical analysis of The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rather, it examines only elements of Tolkien's and Lewis's books that relate to their views about art, fantasy, and creativity, or the implementation of their theories. The result is a unique and altogether fascinating perspective on two of the most revered fantasy authors of all time.

This investigation focuses on C.S. Lewis's and J.R.R. Tolkien's contrasting views of art and imagination, which are key to understanding and interpreting their fantasy works, providing insight into their goals, themes, and techniques, as well as an appreciation of the value and impact of their mythologies. Most scholarship about J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis describes their shared faith and academic interests or analyzes each writer's fantasy works. War of the Fantasy Worlds: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on Art and Imagination is the first to focus solely on their contrasting concepts of fantasy. The authors' views of art and imagination, the book shows, are not only central to understanding the themes, value, and relevance of their fantasy fiction, but are also strikingly different. Understanding the authors' thoughts about fantasy helps us better understand and appreciate their works. Yet, this book is not a critical analysis of The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. Rather, it examines only elements of Tolkien's and Lewis's books that relate to their views about art, fantasy, and creativity, or the implementation of their theories. The result is a unique and altogether fascinating perspective on two of the most revered fantasy authors of all time.

Due in part to recent (and ongoing) film adaptations, the fantasy series of C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials), and J.R.R. Tolkien (The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings) are being introduced to a new audience. Many astronomers and astronomy educators are unaware of the wide variety of astronomical references contained in each series, and the myriad possible uses of these works in astronomy education and outreach. This paper highlights activities which educators, planetariums, and science centers have already developed to utilise these works in their education and outreach programs.

Books Received Mark I. West The Baltimore Bibliophiles at Fifty, 1954–2004. Edited by Donald Farren and August A. Imholtz, Jr. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Bibliophiles, 2009. Children’s Literature Gems: Choosing and Using Them in Your Library Career. By Elizabeth Bird. Chicago: LAL Editions, 2009. Considering Children’s Literature: A Reader. Edited by Andrea Schwenke Wyile and Teya Rosenberg. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2008. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales. By Kurt Schwitters. Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. By Laura Miller. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2008. The Baltimore Bibliophiles at Fifty, 1954–2004. Edited by Donald Farren and August A. Imholtz, Jr. Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Bibliophiles, 2009. Book collecting is often a solitary pursuit, but once in awhile book collectors gather together in groups, and one such group is the Baltimore Bibliophiles. Founded in 1954, this group recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, and they published this volume to mark the occasion. Some members of this group collect children’s books, and this interest is reflected in their volume. The volume includes a scholarly essay by Linda Lapides titled “For Amusement and Instruction: Children’s Books in Bygone Baltimore.” The volume also includes an annotated bibliography of children’s books published in the Baltimore area during the 18th and 19th centuries. Children’s Literature Gems: Choosing and Using Them in Your Library Career. By Elizabeth Bird. Chicago: LAL Editions, 2009. A long-time librarian with the New York Public Library’s Children’s Center, Elizabeth Bird draws on her extensive experience in this practical and insightful resource for children’s librarians. Bird emphasizes children’s books of lasting value, and she provides advice on making building collections and programs around such books. Considering Children’s Literature: A Reader. Edited by Andrea Schwenke Wyile and Teya Rosenberg. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2008. The editors of this anthology bring together 32 essays about children’s literature by leading literary critics and children’s authors. The essays are organized under the following rubrics: Introducing the Study of Children’s Literature; Historical Children’s Literature; The Picturebook; Poetry and Nursery Rhymes; Fairy Tales and Fantasy; Young Adult Literature; Drama and Theatre; Film Adaptation; and Theoretical Explorations and Practical Issues. This anthology would work well as a supplementary text in college-level children’s literature courses. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales. By Kurt Schwitters. Translated and introduced by Jack Zipes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Known as an German artist in the Dadaist movement, Kurt Schwitters also wrote fairy tales. These tales were [End Page 285] written in German between 1925 and 1948, and most of them were never translated into English until now. In this new collection, Jack Zipes provides English translations of 32 of these stories. He also provides a scholarly introduction in which he covers the life and creative career of Kurt Schwitters. The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia. By Laura Miller. New York: Little, Brown and Co., 2008. In this autobiographical work, Laura Miller discusses the evolution of her responses to C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. As she explains, she loved these books as a child, disliked them as a teenager, and renewed her appreciation of them as an adult. For those who are interested in the Narnia books or in reader-response theory, this book has much to offer. [End Page 286] Copyright © 2009 Children’s Literature Association

A series of 50-nm binary FeCr martensitic thin films were sputtered from a single source made of commercial AISI 430 ferritic stainless steel under the deposition rates gradually increased from 0.03 to 0.11 nm/s with 0.02 nm/s steps at stationary condition. And, under 0.09 nm/s deposition rate, a second series of the films were also deposited under the rotation speed of their substrates which was chosen at 0, 25, and 45 rpm. As far as we are concerned, this study is the first investigation of properties of the thin films produced from AISI 430. The atomic Fe content in the films increased from 79.3 to 98.6% while atomic Cr content decreased from 20.5 to 1.2% with the increase of deposition rate from 0.03 to 0.11 nm/s. According to compositional analysis, the Fe content increased while Cr content decreased with increasing deposition rate. The reason for this may be attributed to the relatively different bond energy/melting point of metals which have different contents sputtered from source material since this physical parameter is very significant for the sputtering process. And, the Fe content in the films decreased from 84.9 to 79.2 at. % while the Cr content increased from 14.9 to 20.6 at. % when the increase of rotation speed of substrate. The crystal structure of all films was observed to have a body-centered tetragonal phase and the intensity of (110) peak varied with the atomic Fe content. The surface observations of films performed by a scanning electron microscope exposed that the number of surface grains increased with the increase of deposition rate and decreased with the increase of rotation speed. According to surface roughness analysis done by an atomic force microscope, the roughness of the film surfaces increased as the deposition rate increased. And, the roughness of the film surfaces decreased as the rotation speed increased. This has been consistent with the grain size and roughness parameters. Thus, increasing deposition rate and decreasing rotation speed of the substrate caused an increase in grain size and roughness parameters. The magnetic measurements of the films achieved, by a vibrating sample magnetometer at room temperature, displayed that the saturation magnetization, Ms, values increased from 820.1 to 1700.4 emu/cm3, the remanence magnetization, Mr, values increased from 293 to 817 emu/cm3, and the coercivity, Hc, value also increased from 38 to 107 Oe with the increasing of deposition rate. It is also seen that the magnetic easy axis are in the film plane due to the shape anisotropy. With the increase rotation speed, the values of Ms and Mr increased and the Hc decreased. It was seen that variation of Fe content in the films influences the Ms values and the Hc values are consistent with the surface properties. It was concluded that the deposition rate and the rotation speed of the substrate play a considerable role on the structural and related magnetic properties of the sputtered FeCr thin films, and the properties of the films can be easily controlled by changing production parameters.

Introduction Crime fiction is one of the world’s most popular genres. Indeed, it has been estimated that as many as one in every three new novels, published in English, is classified within the crime fiction category (Knight xi). These new entrants to the market are forced to jostle for space on bookstore and library shelves with reprints of classic crime novels; such works placed in, often fierce, competition against their contemporaries as well as many of their predecessors. Raymond Chandler, in his well-known essay The Simple Art of Murder, noted Ernest Hemingway’s observation that “the good writer competes only with the dead. The good detective story writer […] competes not only with all the unburied dead but with all the hosts of the living as well” (3). In fact, there are so many examples of crime fiction works that, as early as the 1920s, one of the original ‘Queens of Crime’, Dorothy L. Sayers, complained: It is impossible to keep track of all the detective-stories produced to-day [sic]. Book upon book, magazine upon magazine pour out from the Press, crammed with murders, thefts, arsons, frauds, conspiracies, problems, puzzles, mysteries, thrills, maniacs, crooks, poisoners, forgers, garrotters, police, spies, secret-service men, detectives, until it seems that half the world must be engaged in setting riddles for the other half to solve (95). Twenty years after Sayers wrote on the matter of the vast quantities of crime fiction available, W.H. Auden wrote one of the more famous essays on the genre: The Guilty Vicarage: Notes on the Detective Story, by an Addict. Auden is, perhaps, better known as a poet but his connection to the crime fiction genre is undisputed. As well as his poetic works that reference crime fiction and commentaries on crime fiction, one of Auden’s fellow poets, Cecil Day-Lewis, wrote a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Nicholas Blake: the central protagonist of these novels, Nigel Strangeways, was modelled upon Auden (Scaggs 27). Interestingly, some writers whose names are now synonymous with the genre, such as Edgar Allan Poe and Raymond Chandler, established the link between poetry and crime fiction many years before the publication of The Guilty Vicarage. Edmund Wilson suggested that “reading detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking” (395). In the first line of The Guilty Vicarage, Auden supports Wilson’s claim and confesses that: “For me, as for many others, the reading of detective stories is an addiction like tobacco or alcohol” (406). This indicates that the genre is at best a trivial pursuit, at worst a pursuit that is bad for your health and is, increasingly, socially unacceptable, while Auden’s ideas around taste—high and low—are made clear when he declares that “detective stories have nothing to do with works of art” (406). The debates that surround genre and taste are many and varied. The mid-1920s was a point in time which had witnessed crime fiction writers produce some of the finest examples of fiction to ever be published and when readers and publishers were watching, with anticipation, as a new generation of crime fiction writers were readying themselves to enter what would become known as the genre’s Golden Age. At this time, R. Austin Freeman wrote that: By the critic and the professedly literary person the detective story is apt to be dismissed contemptuously as outside the pale of literature, to be conceived of as a type of work produced by half-educated and wholly incompetent writers for consumption by office boys, factory girls, and other persons devoid of culture and literary taste (7). This article responds to Auden’s essay and explores how crime fiction appeals to many different tastes: tastes that are acquired, change over time, are embraced, or kept as guilty secrets. In addition, this article will challenge Auden’s very narrow definition of crime fiction and suggest how Auden’s religious imagery, deployed to explain why many people choose to read crime fiction, can be incorporated into a broader popular discourse on punishment. This latter argument demonstrates that a taste for crime fiction and a taste for justice are inextricably intertwined. Crime Fiction: A Type For Every Taste Cathy Cole has observed that “crime novels are housed in their own section in many bookshops, separated from literary novels much as you’d keep a child with measles away from the rest of the class” (116). Times have changed. So too, have our tastes. Crime fiction, once sequestered in corners, now demands vast tracts of prime real estate in bookstores allowing readers to “make their way to the appropriate shelves, and begin to browse […] sorting through a wide variety of very different types of novels” (Malmgren 115). This is a result of the sheer size of the genre, noted above, as well as the genre’s expanding scope. Indeed, those who worked to re-invent crime fiction in the 1800s could not have envisaged the “taxonomic exuberance” (Derrida 206) of the writers who have defined crime fiction sub-genres, as well as how readers would respond by not only wanting to read crime fiction but also wanting to read many different types of crime fiction tailored to their particular tastes. To understand the demand for this diversity, it is important to reflect upon some of the appeal factors of crime fiction for readers. Many rules have been promulgated for the writers of crime fiction to follow. Ronald Knox produced a set of 10 rules in 1928. These included Rule 3 “Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable”, and Rule 10 “Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them” (194–6). In the same year, S.S. Van Dine produced another list of 20 rules, which included Rule 3 “There must be no love interest: The business in hand is to bring a criminal to the bar of justice, not to bring a lovelorn couple to the hymeneal altar”, and Rule 7 “There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better” (189–93). Some of these directives have been deliberately ignored or have become out-of-date over time while others continue to be followed in contemporary crime writing practice. In sharp contrast, there are no rules for reading this genre. Individuals are, generally, free to choose what, where, when, why, and how they read crime fiction. There are, however, different appeal factors for readers. The most common of these appeal factors, often described as doorways, are story, setting, character, and language. As the following passage explains: The story doorway beckons those who enjoy reading to find out what happens next. The setting doorway opens widest for readers who enjoy being immersed in an evocation of place or time. The doorway of character is for readers who enjoy looking at the world through others’ eyes. Readers who most appreciate skilful writing enter through the doorway of language (Wyatt online). These doorways draw readers to the crime fiction genre. There are stories that allow us to easily predict what will come next or make us hold our breath until the very last page, the books that we will cheerfully lend to a family member or a friend and those that we keep close to hand to re-read again and again. There are settings as diverse as country manors, exotic locations, and familiar city streets, places we have been and others that we might want to explore. There are characters such as the accidental sleuth, the hardboiled detective, and the refined police officer, amongst many others, the men and women—complete with idiosyncrasies and flaws—who we have grown to admire and trust. There is also the language that all writers, regardless of genre, depend upon to tell their tales. In crime fiction, even the most basic task of describing where the murder victim was found can range from words that convey the genteel—“The room of the tragedy” (Christie 62)—to the absurd: “There it was, jammed between a pallet load of best export boneless beef and half a tonne of spring lamb” (Maloney 1). These appeal factors indicate why readers might choose crime fiction over another genre, or choose one type of crime fiction over another. Yet such factors fail to explain what crime fiction is or adequately answer why the genre is devoured in such vast quantities. Firstly, crime fiction stories are those in which there is the committing of a crime, or at least the suspicion of a crime (Cole), and the story that unfolds revolves around the efforts of an amateur or professional detective to solve that crime (Scaggs). Secondly, crime fiction offers the reassurance of resolution, a guarantee that from “previous experience and from certain cultural conventions associated with this genre that ultimately the mystery will be fully explained” (Zunshine 122). For Auden, the definition of the crime novel was quite specific, and he argued that referring to the genre by “the vulgar definition, ‘a Whodunit’ is correct” (407). Auden went on to offer a basic formula stating that: “a murder occurs; many are suspected; all but one suspect, who is the murderer, are eliminated; the murderer is arrested or dies” (407). The idea of a formula is certainly a useful one, particularly when production demands—in terms of both quality and quantity—are so high, because the formula facilitates creators in the “rapid and efficient production of new works” (Cawelti 9). For contemporary crime fiction readers, the doorways to reading, discussed briefly above, have been cast wide open. Stories relying upon the basic crime fiction formula as a foundation can be gothic tales, clue puzzles, forensic procedurals, spy thrillers, hardboiled narratives, or violent crime narratives, amongst many others. The settings can be quiet villages or busy metropolises, landscapes that readers actually inhabit or that provide a form

Founding Violence in the Future: A Mnemonic Reading of Ridley Scott’s Alien Travis Hay I believe that the representation of alien existence, that is to say, of the imagination of radical otherness, can be seen to have passed through several distinct stages on its way to the contemporary period (where the alien and the other has once again reverted to magic and to dragons). —Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future (140) In this article, I offer a settler colonial reading of Sir Ridley Scott’s Alien films: Alien (1979), Prometheus (2012), and Alien: Covenant (2017). My purpose is to underscore the historical dimensions within Alien’s depiction of the future and to demonstrate that the film series is far more exercised with historicity than with futurity. Specifically, I argue that Scott’s metaphors, themes, and plots were intentionally evocative of the horrors of British imperial expansion within North America and function as a kind of mnemonic device that remember the violence of the settler colonial past. More broadly, I offer this analysis because, like many other scholars, I view the science fiction and horror genres, between which we can locate Alien, as remarkably provocative and productive. Such non-realist depictions of monsters, zombies, ghosts, alien invasions, or the human colonization of outer space contain archives of historical feeling that can be accessed through what Chickasaw scholar Jodi Byrd called a “mnemonic reading” praxis. In The Transit of Empire, Byrd explains that a mnemonic reading seeks to “connect the violences and genocides of colonization to cultural productions […] in order to disrupt the elisions of multicultural liberal democracy that seek to rationalize the originary historical traumas that birthed settler colonialism through inclusion” (xii-xiii). In reading Scott’s film series mnemonically as a larger story invested with settler colonial genocide and preoccupied with foreclosures of human futurity, I add to a considerable body of scholarly literature on Alien that has [End Page 188] shaped my reading of the series as well as my approach to the horror and science fiction genres as cathected with coloniality. For readers unfamiliar with Alien, it will suffice to describe it here as a popular series of films, graphic novels, comic books, video games, and other cultural productions that stage violent and horrific conflicts between human beings and a particular species of “Alien” that wreaks havoc upon the crews of spaceships attempting to explore, settle, or mine a futuristic galactic frontier. The titular “Alien,” whose fully-developed form is called the Xenomorph, is monstrous and has acidic blood. It also has a second set of jaws that protrude from a tongue-like appendage extending from the monster’s mouth, though this is not its most grotesque or defining feature. The Xenomorph is able to use human bodies for its own sexual reproduction cycle and attacks its hosts with a gestational implant that later bursts from the chest of the victim in what has become a signature body horror sequence in any Alien cultural production. In addition to the fact that Alien films have women as protagonists, this recurring body horror motif wherein human beings are fatally impregnated by the Xenomorph has made the series particularly interesting to feminist scholars, who (at least in my view) have generated the most productive conversations on the franchise since the first film debuted in 1979 (Bell-Mettreau; Creed; Jeffords; Rushing; Torry; Vaughn). In many such readings, Alien is a science fiction and horror fusion that contained several complex themes associated with motherhood as well as many gendered horror movie tropes, such as “the final girl,” which Carol J. Cleaver theorized in Men, Women, and Chainsaws as the heroine who survives the violent ordeal and is able to kill the villain of a horror film; some examples include Jamie Lee Curtis’s character in Halloween or Betsy Palmer’s character in Friday the 13th. In my reading, Alien’s body horror and staging of reproductive violence on the galactic frontier remains remarkably gendered; however, I read Alien mnemonically to demonstrate that this gendered dimension intersects with what is, after all, a fundamentally colonial metaphor wherein the futuristic galactic frontier is haunted by the horror of what was done to Indigenous peoples...

The authors present the results of authentic theologizing with children while using the Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis in the process of religious education. Since the 1950s, when this series of seven fantasy novels for children was published it became recognized as an English classic of children’s literature. Although from the beginning, they have faced praise as well as criticism – particularly due to the recent attempt to use them as a script for a film adaptation – experience with this series of children’s book shows that they can contribute positively to the development of children’s religious thinking. The most important concept for the development of the spirituality of children is their concept of God and what it means to have faith in God.