Regan Flieg: Keeping Quiet about Encounters in Narnia

    This week in class, we revisited the idea from Lewis’s “Myth Became Fact” that we cannot know something at the same time as we are experiencing it (65).  During class, we discussed the distinction between an experience, which occurs within the self, and an encounter, which occurs amongst others, and how once we thematize something into knowledge, we don’t hold it as an experience or an encounter anymore.  

    Looking back, I think this connects to a moment at the very end of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that I never quite understood.  In the closing pages of the book, the Professor gives the children some advice after they tell him about how they lost his coats in Narnia, and although it made sense to me why he would tell them not go around telling other people about their adventures in another world, there is another aspect of his advice that is puzzling (Lewis, Lion, Witch, Wardrobe 187-188).  The Professor also says, “And don’t talk too much about it even among yourselves”  (Lewis, Lion, Witch, Wardrobe 188).  Inspecting this quote through the lens of “Myth Became Fact” and our classroom discussion, it’s possible that the Professor, in advising the children not to talk to each other about the encounter they shared in Narnia, hopes for them to avoid abstracting their encounter into themes and knowledge so that it remains what it was.  This may not have been the intention, but I think it does provide some interesting food for thought, and I would be curious to hear others’ takes on this piece of advice from the Professor.


Lewis, C. S. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 1950.  Scholastic, Inc., 1995.

Lewis, C. S. “Myth Became Fact.” God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, edited by Walter
    Hooper, Eerdmans, 1970, pp. 63-67.  

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