Posted by: @icarus

 

And oddly enough that's exactly what the author Francis Spufford did!

 

Yes, I'm aware of his book, which as far as I know is a controversial subject in this forum — basically he self-published it for private distribution solely among family and friends. I don't know how far that goes in terms of breach of copyright if the writer is not actually selling it for money or marketing it publicly in any way, but it's a murky grey-area kind of move at the very least and I don't know if it's acceptable to promote such a work here.

I know copyright issues can be a sensitive subject for many, but just as I love hearing all of the crazy fan theories and speculations from the fans on NarniaWeb, i'd also love to hear a crazy fan theory from an award winning author articulated in professional-quality storytelling.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about that particular work. I don't support illegal publication and infringement of an author's intellectual property rights, but as I said, I don't know if what that writer did was technically breaking the law. (The legality of fan fiction is a debatable topic even when it's published solely online, which could be seen as distributing it more widely than a printed version could anyway.) But I too would also be deeply interested in knowing what a skilled author could do for a fill-in-the-gaps story between The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe — the point in the Narnia saga that needs the most gap-filling (and outright-gaping-holes-in-the-plot filling) by far.

Doubtful its ever something I'll get to see in my lifetime though.

As far as I know, Lewis's copyright in the UK expires in 2034 (70 years after the death of the author), and may already have expired in countries with a shorter copyright term, so it's not impossible that we'll see no-longer-illegal new Narnia stories — whether that one or others — coming onto the public market in less than 10 years' time...

Obviously, one could argue that Narnia had a head start, in that the first humans there came from the late Victorian era in our world and would have had at least some knowledge of industrial-age technology. Uncle Andrew certainly has ambitions in that direction when he imagines the magic in the newly-created Narnian soil turning bits of scrap iron into "brand new railway engines, battleships, anything you please." But apart from the fact that that particular power is only temporary, humans share this new world of Narnia with literally dozens of other sentient beings: Talking Beasts, Dryads, Naiads, Fauns, Dwarfs, and still others, most of whom probably wouldn't be at all impressed by the kinds of technology Uncle Andrew would like to create there. Plus it's a world where magic definitely exists and has real power, and where human ambitions and schemes (and vanity) don't tend to get very far. Regardless of the time span available, it is just not the kind of world where one could expect technology to evolve in anything like the same way it has on our planet.

I think it would depend on the individuals.  There will always be someone somewhere who will be impressed by technology.  The dwarves in God of War and Dungeons & Dragons are known for inventions.  Especially, a world where magic exists could definitely be the kind where one could expect technology.  The people who can't do magic will want to keep up with the people who can, like Tony Stark and Syndrome from The Incredibles.

So what further role could the Stone Table have played in Narnia's history, even just "for the sake of story telling"? What role could it have played in The Last Battle, or any of the other stories, when it no longer had any function or purpose? It could have been a place of worship, perhaps, but we never see acts of "worship" in Narnia — not in the way that the Calormenes, for example, have temples and worship their gods in the form of idols. Nobody in Narnia, as far as we see, makes shrines to Aslan or holds prayer services or rituals in places sacred to him. I would guess Lewis was quite deliberate in not giving the Narnians an organised religion centred on Aslan, despite him being the same Saviour who is worshipped religiously in our world under "another name".

Was the Stone Table designed SOLELY for execution or other Deep Magic?  The first Narnians find this ancient Stone Table left here by Aslan, settlers would gravitate toward it and establish communities there.  Isn't that why they set up camp in LWW?  Use it as a meeting place for parley and diplomacy?  And then after it was broken, even if the magic is gone, I would think the pieces would be kept for religious or historical value, like that Black Stone in Mecca or pieces of Jesus' cross.

@courtenay I actually have some strongly-held theories about the transition of Jadis into the White Witch role? I'm not completely sure if this is the place to air them or if it would take us too far off topic, so mods sound off if I step out of line! But. I have the idea that... basically, just as she found herself without working magic when she tried to curse Aunt Letty in MN, she was also effectively powerless at first in Narnia. She had ambition and the evil in her heart, and thus potential to be a threat, but she wasn't a powerful enchantress there any more because different worlds' magic runs on different rules, you see. In her unrecorded time up North she had to have done some research and experimentation, and learned more about the world she was stuck in. Possibly the apple of youth gave her a jump-start on... fitting into the world's magical ecosystem so to speak, but I think she learned she needed to work to some extent within the Emperor's laws for her magic to *function properly* in the bounds of Narnia, and so she sort of... slipped into a role in the magical ecosystem to camouflage herself, and get the world to accept her. I further theorize, although I'm less certain on this, that her role was not *limited* to being "the Emperor's hangman" - that was Mr. Beaver's grasp at an explanation! Her role was quite literally *Winter,* she made herself into a sort of seasonal spirit representing Winter's aspect as the death and stasis of the world, and refused to even move aside for Spring to come until Aslan forced it to happen. The bit where she had permission within the magic laws to bring death where death was due, was almost a side-effect of the Winter nature. I also think this may have been how she had authority to keep Father Christmas out of the domain she tyranized, he's *joy* within Winter and celebration of the light at the midpoint of the darkness and the coming of the King into the world, but as long as she jammed up the workings of the turning of the seasons there was no midpoint to celebrate. The King had to return to restore nature to wholeness and its natural cycle. In a way she should perhaps have suspected that the Deep Magic had ancient loopholes for resurrection, even if she didn't know they would be specifically triggered by an innocent substitutionary sacrifice - after all, Winter can't keep nature dead no matter how it may try, much less nature's Lord.

This is, of course, my private way of understanding how the transition between those elements of the book would "work" in that world! I do recognize that Lewis ran very heavily on thematic "vibes" rather than insisting on coherent worldbuilding, and there is no guarantee he didn't just retcon her origin story on a whim.

@silverlily Very interesting ideas... maybe, so we don't keep taking this thread off the topic of the Stone Table specifically, someone should start a separate discussion on "What do you think happened in Narnia between the end of MN and the start of LWW?" or something like that. Would others here be interested?  

@courtenay I would be down for that! Then we can discuss things like the actual invasion/takeover of Narnia, at what point the Cair and the Thrones were built, development of the Archenland dynasty, etc along with Jadis/White Witch development theories! ^-^

@silverlily Right, I'll start one shortly!  

I should also clarify that when I said earlier (deliberately being a little airy about it) that Lewis encouraged "fan fiction", of course he wasn't writing in a time when fan fiction as we know it today could be published in any real sense. We simply don't know what he would have thought of the ability people have now to publish virtually anything on the internet, or indeed to get books privately printed on demand.

Fan fiction is a genuinely controversial subject in legal terms, with modern authors' attitudes to it ranging from absolute "cease and desist" to "go right ahead and have fun, so long as you're not making money out of it". But Lewis lived and died much too long before the internet was even close to becoming "a thing" for us to know whether his private encouragement of young readers' creativity would have translated into support for fan fiction as we know it today.

I have mixed feelings about it myself, as I said, so I'll get right off the topic now and start that new thread!

Posted by: @col-klink Anyway, since The Magician's Nephew takes place at the very beginning of Narnian history and the premise of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe required it to be gone, I'm not surprised we didn't see it again. My head canon is that eventually the Narnians neglected it or even completely forgot its purpose and made it into kindling, allowing the White Witch to enter Narnia and put a curse on the land.

Whilst this Stone Table, or, if you like, something of a sacrificial altar, was placed in Narnia before Jadis' return to Narnia, she had ample time to read what was carved on it, if she could be bothered. It was the letter of the law. When she was in Narnia as this country's creation was being put into execution, she had no understanding of the intention behind this creation was about mercy & the spirit of the law, and not about the letter of the law, & the execution of just vengeance. The stone table did appear again in Prince Caspian, by which time it had been entombed in Aslan's Howe, with its story outlined on the walls of the entrance to it, just like you might see on the walls of a Nineveh ruin or in an Egyptian pyramid. In a sense, the stone table did turn up again, metaphorically, in the guise of Aslan's Table, on Ramandu's island. I was also digging out my Narnia companions, almost an archaeological expedition in itself, to see if I could find a map. Where, exactly, was Aslan's Howe? And where was Stable Hill, in the Last Battle? Were they one & the same? Maybe in Narnia.   King Caspian had visited Aslan's Howe, & he ate at Aslan's Table, but it was a long time before the Last Battle & the ending of the series. 

@coracle: motor cars and Mr Toad do not appear anywhere in the Narnia stories.

No, a month ago, I reread my old, cherished Wind in the Willows, in its 91st edition, published in 1948. That story had been first issued on the 9th of October, of 1908. That doesn't mean that Toad's human equivalent couldn't have appeared in Magician's Nephew, in the shape of one Uncle Andrew, whose dabbling in things he didn't truly understand, made him almost as much of a figure of fun, as the disastrously impulsive & vain Mr Toad, who only thought of himself.  

@waggawerewolf27 In case this wasn't clear, I was talking about the Tree of Protection, not the Stone Table, in the part of my post you quoted. Sorry if there was any confusion. 

@Col Klink: Yes, you did mention both the Stone Table & the Tree of Protection. Mea Culpa, then   & my sincere apologies. I was more interested in the Stone Table, for various reasons, when I knew of Digory's tree being turned into a wardrobe, so I felt I almost knew what happened to its parent tree. 

The tree that grew from the fruit of the Tree of Protection, in MN, that Digory brought back to his mother, blew down some time, during a great storm, well before the Pevensies came into the picture, at the beginning of WW2. The wood from that tree was turned into a wardrobe, the same wardrobe which was in LWW. It was assumed later, when the Pevensies & the Professor discussed the matter, that something also happened to the original Tree of Protection in Narnia at the same time as its offspring was demolished in a storm.

If Jadis could have forced Narnia into 100 years of winter without Christmas, then surely, she could have conjured up a storm fierce enough to destroy the Tree of Protection, without her ever needing to go anywhere near it, when even in MN, Aslan predicted that humanity might find something as bad as the Deplorable Word, or worse. In reality, at C.S.Lewis' time of writing, we were then in the grip of the Cold War. And I've never forgotten that C.S.Lewis died the same day as JFK, when as a teenager on what we called Stuvac, I heard the news at a local hardware & produce store, where I had gone to shop for a letterbox, when ours had collapsed. 

By the way, how & when was that City of the Giants destroyed, when the White Witch had gone in that Northern direction, after she fled from Aslan, in Magician's Nephew? I wonders, as Smeagol/Gollum would say.

@waggawerewolf27 If I may ask, why did you quote me at all when what you quoted didn't really have anything to do with what you were talking about? I guess that sounds rude, but I'm curious and I can't think of a better way to ask that.  

Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

The tree that grew from the fruit of the Tree of Protection, in MN, that Digory brought back to his mother, blew down some time, during a great storm, well before the Pevensies came into the picture, at the beginning of WW2. The wood from that tree was turned into a wardrobe, the same wardrobe which was in LWW. It was assumed later, when the Pevensies & the Professor discussed the matter, that something also happened to the original Tree of Protection in Narnia at the same time as its offspring was demolished in a storm.

Do we know that last bit for sure? It's a logical assumption and it could well be correct, but I can't remember us being told that the Pevensies and the Professor ever specifically discussed what happened to the Tree of Protection and came to that conclusion. Unless I've had a memory lapse with The Last Battle, which that reference must be in if it happened at all — I've read it fewer times than the other Chronicles, probably because it's such a harrowing story until the last several chapters!

We don't hear about the Tree in Narnia after MN.

We can only conclude that the Tree did not prevent the Witch getting back in, so either it had lost its power or had perished. 

Paul Ford's 'Companion To Narnia' says WW came back in  898 (his chart is based on the Hooper one, which he said was Lewis's). 

That meant the Tree lasted most of a millennium. 

Like everybody said, the Stone Table wasn't so significant anymore after it had accomplished its main purpose of raising Aslan from the dead. And @narnia 78 it does show up in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader. BTW... good question @Courtney.

Posted by: @col-klink

@waggawerewolf27 If I may ask, why did you quote me at all when what you quoted didn't really have anything to do with what you were talking about? I guess that sounds rude, but I'm curious and I can't think of a better way to ask that.  

Because the topic for this thread was largely about the Stone Table, & when I read your first response, admittedly in a hurry, when that is often what I have to do, I assumed, I agree, that what you were talking about was the Stone Table, even when you mentioned kindling, which, as far as I know about materials & substances like stone, wood & other sorts of substances, doesn't apply to stone, at any rate.  But, of course, when you meant the Tree of Protection, I should have cottoned on to what you really meant. As I have already explained on this thread & elsewhere, given my elderly age group, I could & did see Jadis' occupation of Narnia as somewhat akin to something like a Nuclear Winter, something that in the 1950's & 1960's people, like myself, in that day & age, in the Western World, in Australia, an ally of USA & UK, we, or at least I, felt definitely threatened with, one way or another. 🥶

@Courtenay: Do we know that last bit for sure? It's a logical assumption and it could well be correct, but I can't remember us being told that the Pevensies and the Professor ever specifically discussed what happened to the Tree of Protection and came to that conclusion. 

I'd have to chase up my reference, but I am fairly sure that somewhere, either in the books, themselves, or in the audio versions, either BBC or the Focus on the Family version, there was really some sort of discussion about the matter, somewhere.  Or could it have been in either Paul Ford's Companion to Narnia, or somewhere else? I'd welcome someone's comment if they find it, when at the moment I am kept somewhat busy with family matters. I know it wasn't in the film versions, at any rate, when for much of my adult life I haven't enjoyed the run of the TV, without some sort of protest.