INTERVIEW: Jem Bloomfield

Jem Bloomfield discusses C.S. Lewis, Narnia, and his new book, Paths in the Snow: A literary journey through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

When and where did your interest in all things Narnia begin?

The first time I can remember being aware of Narnia was thirty-five years ago, when the BBC broadcast their adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  I was about five at the time, and I remember sitting down at 4pm every Sunday to watch it.  I was absolutely entranced.  I also became convinced that Maugrim the wolf was hiding in the wardrobe at the bottom of my bed, but all great art has its risks.   That TV series pointed me towards the novels, and everything else followed.

How did your new book come about?

It’s something of a cliché, but the origins of this book lie in lockdown during the pandemic.  Amongst the other arrangements which had to be made, for work, childcare, shopping, etc, our parish church was trying to find ways of keeping some sort of communal Christian life going.  I had the idea of reading through a classic book together, and chose The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe because I thought many people would have a copy or know the story.  Then when I returned to the university where I teach, I set up a discussion group to explore the Narnia novels with my students.  We delved into all sorts of odd by-ways in our chats, around mythology and language, as well a crucial questions such as why the Witch used a stone knife and why the Pevensies ended up speaking pseudo-medieval English when none of the other Narnians seem to.  There was also a distinct tendency amongst the membership towards forming the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Susans.  That group has been running for a few years now, and it prompted me to write Paths in the Snow. 

What were some of C.S. Lewis’s inspirations when writing The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

This is one of the big questions I examine in the book: Paths in the Snow involves tracing a lot of literary connections and echoes of other texts.  I’ll suggest some of the inspirations which seem most interesting and striking from my point of view, but there are plenty more!  Frances Hodgson Burnett had an effect: I think Lewis borrowed the image of a robin leading children to a magical world from her The Secret Garden, as well as the larger themes of spiritual renewal and healing accompanying the burgeoning of plants in springtime.  The medieval poet William Dunbar inspired Lewis with his dramatic piling up of images for Christ in “On the Resurrection” – he describes Easter morning in terms of a lion rising up, a giant, a broken prison, a dawn goddess and various other symbols.  I think that approach to theological imagery shaped Lewis’ own imagination, and encouraged him to layer symbols and images across each other in Narnia. Of course it also may have shown Lewis that a rising lion was a good symbol for the resurrection! 

Along similar lines, I suspect the anonymous carol “Adam Lay Ybounden” sparked some ideas for Lewis, with its imagery of humanity lying bound for “four thousand winters” before the arrival of salvation.  He was a prodigiously well-read writer, even for an academic who specialised in literature, and he had a conviction that “children’s books” were as meaningful as any other kind of writing.  So The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe contains traces of everything from Dante to The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and from The Wind in the Willows to Le Morte D’arthur.

The Narnia universe is rich in Christian symbolism. How important was Lewis’s Christian faith to his writing?

I think it was essential, certainly to his fiction.  I would say it provided the sense of the enchanted which Narnia evokes so powerfully, the vision that the novels present – as well as the sense that there is something else beyond the horizon.  Narnia is a remarkable kind of fantasy, because it has proved enormously attractive and engrossing, whilst almost always managing to point the reader beyond itself.  Many readers find that it enchants our world; you might expect that a fantasy as bright and vivid as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would make our own surroundings seem drab and boring.  But many people find the opposite, and end the novel with a feeling of mystery and magic surrounding them even as the Pevensies return to England.

The Christian symbolism also seems essential to the distinctive way in which Lewis writes fantasy.  I mentioned the influence of Dunbar’s poem and the anonymous “Adam Lay Ybounden”.  Lewis does something rather remarkable with those literary texts.  He takes symbolic language and renders it literal and physical.  The endless winter which is used to express the Fall and humanity’s entrapment before Christ’ liberation, is transposed into Lewis’ fantasy world.  This theological metaphor becomes literally true in Narnia, as the land actually is in the grip of endless winter until Aslan comes.  It seems to me that this is a particular feature of the Narnia novels: Lewis borrows symbolic theological language like “four thousand winters”, “the Lion of Judah”, “the tables of stone” and builds them into his fantasy world as literal parts of the landscape.  It’s not only that readers get to hear many of the great symbols of the Christian tradition echoed.  They get to imaginatively inhabit them, to follow characters who explore them physically and undertake adventures amongst them.

If you were able to ask C.S. Lewis a question directly – about his books and/or his life – what would you ask?

As an academic and a deeply pedantic little man, of course the temptation would be to get some definitive information on topics that scholars have debated and discussed about Lewis.  “So, Professor Lewis, what about Ward’s cosmological reading of your fiction?  How far is he right?”, or “Langrish’s reframing of The Susan Problem away from moral intuition and into textual continuity seems extremely persuasive to me – has she pinned down the issue there?”. Or even just “Right, how do you actually pronounce hnakrapunt, and where does the stress fall in the word?”  But this would surely be a waste of the opportunity.  Given Lewis’ insistence that he wanted to point away from his works to other things which mattered more, I suspect these questions would irritate and bore him. I would just ask him: “What should I read?”

What do you hope readers will gain from reading Paths in the Snow?

I hope they find it a helpful companion to explore The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – that it enables them to see things about Narnia which they might have missed, or perhaps that it helps them to articulate feelings and impressions they’ve had but not been quite able to express.  I hope that Paths in the Snow might spark the kinds of conversations between friends and church groups which I’ve participated in, and that it could encourage people to draw out their own literary and theological ideas within Narnia.

Jem Bloomfield is assistant professor of literature at the University of Nottingham, and a Reader in the Church of England. He is the author of Words of Power: Reading Shakespeare and the Bible (Lutterworth, 2016), Shakespeare and the Psalms Mystery (Erewash, 2018) and Witchcraft and Paganism in Midcentury Women’s Detective Fiction (Cambridge, 2022). He teaches on C.S. Lewis at undergraduate and postgraduate level, as well as running retreats and study days based around Narnia. He runs a weekly extra-curricular session for his university students, which he insists is the C.S. Lewis Reading Group, but the students insist it’s Narnia Club and they’re making badges to prove it.

Paths in the Snow: A literary journey through The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by Jem Bloomfield is available now in hardback, priced £16.99.