Luiseach

Geez, and here all along I thought I was just trying to be helpful.

Gurdur

A couple of notes, Luiseach:

IIRC, iff IIRC, "Aslan" means "lion" in Turkish.
I'll check up on that, but I think Lewis got the name from there.

Tolkien sneered at Lewis' The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, which was rather a melánge, and ignored Lewis' attempt to tie in the Narnian books with the beginnings of the LOTR and Silmarrillion manuscripts (there's one line in one of the Narnian books which refers to that; "Numenor", etc.); but Lewis got much better and more consistant with his later Narnian books.
Besides which, Lewis and Tolkien took turns at sneering at each other.
Interestingly, his talent shows itself in that he managed to make the Narnian books very good, including TLTW&TW, despite the melánge effect.

Have you seen the film about Lewis and Joy, Shadowlands ?
A very beautiful and very moving film.

Luiseach

D'you know, I've been trying to find out about this very thing, Tim. Thanks for that, and thanks in advance for checking up on it. The issue of the name 'Aslan' has been plaguing me.

I thought there was some kind of rivalry between the two...perhaps a species of intellectual jealousy? Whatever the case, Tolkien's writing is definitely more complex and sophisticated than that of Lewis (in my opinion), but at the same time, Lewis's writing is deceptively accessible, and more ham-fisted in its religious polemic, despite his insistence that he wasn't trying to write a Christian allegory. Tolkien's world in LOTR is not a Christian one (although I've seen some strained analyses trying to draw parallels between events and imagery in his work and events and imagery in the Bible), but something else again. He's original in a way that Lewis - with his thinly-veiled (or unveiled) allusions to Christian mythology - could never be.

I did indeed, but I don't think I appreciated it properly at the time, so I really must see it again.

Gurdur

IIRC, and iff IIRC, in modern standard Turkish, it's "Arpslan", but in older Turkish dialects, it's "Aslan", and was often used as a title or part of a title, which is how it would have caught Lewis' attention.
I'm going to research this one in depth.
Catch you later.
When Tolkien first joined the uni, Lewis looked down on Tolkien as a lower-class bumptious oik.
Much later on, Tolkien made very unflattering comments on Lewis' Narnian and Perelandra books.
See Humphreys, The Inklings, for a full history of this.
I assume you read A Grief Observed and also Surprised By Joy ?
Also, please do read Humphreys, The Inklings, before seeing the film again --- in order to catch the full poignancy of Lewis' doomed love affair, it is really necessary to know the history of Lewis' life --- and the fact that he was a virgin till 41 and Joy, and then not long after the marriage, Joy died of a malignant sarcoma, which of course knocked Lewis for a six very badly indeed, and that is represented in his theology after that date suddenly getting serious and no longer the very superficial thingy it was till then.

Gurdur

Yet another note:

in my experience, it's Protestants who tend to read the Narnian books, and also though less the Perelandra trilogy.

Catholics tend (or at least tended) to read Chesterton instead.

I read both Lewis and Chesterton.

Luiseach

How odd. I wonder why that is? Lewis was an Anglican, wasn't he? (which is, I know, protestant, but only so's Henry VIII could get that divorce he so wanted)

Not Tolkien, then?

Gurdur

The emphasis on newer theology in Lewis
Yes.
But the CofE is very broad.
I know of at least two Brit soldiers who when joining up were asked what their religion was, and when they replied "atheist", were told by the sergeants, "Ah, that'll be Church OF England then".
Somewhat more complex than that; Queen Elizabeth the First is far more responsible for the direction and real formation of the CofE than Henry was.
The very real fear the English had of both the Catholic mainland, especially Spain, and also later the Calvinist Scots, made very real effects upon the CofE.
Tch, must I also note D.M. Greenwood, Lindsey Davis et al ?

Or how about that precursor of Tolkien, E. R. Eddison ?
A sheer pagan, and rather 18th century. I read him too.


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Dargo

Didn't the Church of England go through an extremely conservative period during Cromwell's rule? Their later liberalism might have been an attempt to undo that period.

Gurdur

The whole of England did.
Even Christmas celebrations were banned as pagan.
An interesting thought; the reaction against Cromwell's puritanism came mostly from the common people, who really didn't see the sense in rigid puritanism.

The CofE hierarchy attempted their own brand of conservatism later, especially in the 19th century, but it was rather doomed from the outset.

Interestingly, the English hierarchy of the CofE --- e.g. Rowan Williams, and the Evangelical movement inside the CofE --- are attemting a last-ditch stand and/or actual reactionarism today, agaisnt such issues as ordination of women, women bishops, and gay clergy.

The chances of a large split throughout the CofE are rather large.

Gurdur

OK, I checked up, and Aslan means lion in modern Turkish too.

It turns out to also be a very common surname in Turkey, and a very common first name for boys in Turkomenic parts of Iran.

Now it must have been one of the more famous Ottoman sultans titled or named Aslan to have given Lewis the idea (since the Mongolians dídn't use Turkish or Turkish names at all, and the Tartars never achieved individual fame, and none of the modern famous Turks have interestiing names --- it tends to be things like Enver Pasha, Kemal Attaturk etc.), so I'll have to look through the Ottoman sultans to see which one.
I'll get back on this.