Love And Growth:A Biblical Archetypal Study Of The Chronicles Of Narnia:the Lion,the Witch And The Wardrobe

The Chronicles of Narnia is the most famous work of Clive Staples Lewis,a great English writer and literary critic,and can be regarded as a classic of children's literature.It consists of seven novels: The Lion,the Witch and the Wardrobe,Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia,The Voyage of the Dawn Treader,The Silver Chair,The Horse and His Boy,The Magician's Nephew and The Last Battle.“Narnia” in this story is a magical kingdom.In seven books,the protagonists enter Narnia by a magic ring or by the door of a magic wardrobe.With the help of the great Lion King Aslan,they fought against all kinds of evil forces and saved the people of Narnia and defended this magical country through brave adventures and battles.Lewis was deeply influenced by Christian culture and Frye's archetypal criticism,every book in the series The Chronicles of Narnia is more or less related to the biblical stories.Frye is a famous Canadian literary critic and thinker.On the basis of Frazer's anthropological theory and Jung's psychological archetypal theory,he put forward a solid theory of mythological archetypal criticism.In his masterpiece The Anatomy of Criticism,he systematically expounds the important role of myth in the history of human thoughts and civilization.He believes that myths and archetypes are interlinked,or even substituted for each other.As the oldest literary narrative,myth is the most basic literary archetype.After that,all kinds of literary types have evolved on the basis of myth,and the Bible is the core of the representative of western mythology.The novel The Chronicles of Narnia contains many biblical archetypes.These archetypes permeate all aspects of the text,such as characters,narrative structures and themes.With the archetypal theory as framework and The Lion,the Witch and the Wardrobe as the research object,this paper first explores the biblical archetypal characters in the novel.Through the analysis of several main characters: Aslan,the White Witch and Peter,this paper reveals the biblical archetypal influence on the creation of characters of the novel.Then it focused on discussing the narrative structure of the novel,it explores how the author imitates the U-shaped structure of biblical stories.At last,this paper interprets the novel from the perspective of biblical archetypal motifs,revealing Lewis' understanding of the Bible and to guide people in dilemma and perplexity: No matter what difficulties we are in,we should keep a positive and optimistic attitude towards life,never compromise to difficulties and finally grow up and become mature in the process of dealing with difficulties.