Editing The Chronicles of Narnia (section)

===Influences from mythology and cosmology===
Drew Trotter, president of the Center for Christian Study, noted that the producers of the film ''[[The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe]]'' felt that the books' plots adhere to the archetypal "[[monomyth]]" pattern as detailed in [[Joseph Campbell]]'s ''[[The Hero with a Thousand Faces]]''.<ref>{{cite web |last=Trotter |first=Drew |title=What Did C. S. Lewis Mean, and Does It Matter? |url=http://www.leaderu.com/popculture/meaningandlewis-lwwpreview.html |date=11 November 2005|access-date=28 October 2008|publisher=Leadership U }}</ref>

Lewis was widely read in [[British literature#Early Celtic literature|medieval Celtic literature]], an influence reflected throughout the books, and most strongly in ''The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.'' The entire book imitates one of the [[immram]]a, a type of traditional [[Old Irish]] tale that combines elements of Christianity and [[Irish mythology]] to tell the story of a hero's sea journey to the [[Celtic Otherworld|Otherworld]].<ref>{{cite journal |last=Huttar |first=Charles A. |author-link=Charles A. Huttar |title="Deep lies the sea-longing": inklings of home (1)|journal=[[Mythlore]] |date=22 September 2007 |url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/%22Deep+lies+the+sea-longing%22%3A+inklings+of+home+(1).-a0171579955}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Duriez|first=Colin|title=A Field Guide to Narnia|year=2004|publisher=InterVarsity Press|pages=80, 95}}</ref>

====''Planet Narnia''====

[[Michael Ward (scholar)|Michael Ward]]'s 2008 book ''Planet Narnia''{{sfn|Ward|2008}} proposes that each of the seven books related to one of the [[Classical planet|seven moving heavenly bodies or "planets"]] known in the Middle Ages according to the [[Ptolemaic system|Ptolemaic geocentric model]] of [[cosmology]] (a theme to which Lewis returned habitually throughout his work). At that time, each of these heavenly bodies was believed to have certain attributes, and Ward contends that these attributes were deliberately but subtly used by Lewis to furnish elements of the stories of each book:
:In ''The Lion'' [the child protagonists] become monarchs under sovereign [[Jupiter (mythology)|Jove]]; in ''Prince Caspian'' they harden under strong [[Mars (mythology)|Mars]]; in ''The "Dawn Treader"'' they drink light under searching [[Sol (Roman mythology)|Sol]]; in ''The Silver Chair'' they learn obedience under subordinate [[Luna (mythology)|Luna]]; in ''The Horse and His Boy'' they come to love poetry under eloquent [[Mercury (mythology)|Mercury]]; in ''The Magician's Nephew'' they gain life-giving fruit under fertile [[Venus (mythology)|Venus]]; and in ''The Last Battle'' they suffer and die under chilling [[Saturn (mythology)|Saturn]].{{sfn|Ward|2008|page=237}}

Lewis's interest in the literary symbolism of medieval and Renaissance astrology is more overtly referenced in other works such as his study of medieval cosmology ''[[The Discarded Image]]'', and in his early poetry as well as in ''[[The Space Trilogy|Space Trilogy]]''. Narnia scholar Paul F. Ford finds Ward's assertion that Lewis intended ''The Chronicles'' to be an embodiment of medieval astrology implausible,{{sfn|Ford|2005|page=16}} though Ford addresses an earlier (2003) version of Ward's thesis (also called ''Planet Narnia'', published in the ''Times Literary Supplement'').  Ford argues that Lewis did not start with a coherent plan for the books, but Ward's book answers this by arguing that the astrological associations grew in the writing:
:Jupiter was... [Lewis's] favourite planet, part of the "habitual furniture" of his mind... ''The Lion'' was thus the first example of that "idea that he wanted to try out". ''Prince Caspian'' and ''The "Dawn Treader"'' naturally followed because Mars and Sol were both already connected in his mind with the merits of the [[Samuel Alexander|Alexander]] technique.... at some point after commencing ''The Horse and His Boy'' he resolved to treat all seven planets, for seven such treatments of his idea would mean that he had "worked it out to the full".{{sfn|Ward|2008|page=222}}

A quantitative analysis on the imagery in the different books of ''The Chronicles'' gives mixed support to Ward's thesis: ''The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'', ''The Silver Chair'', ''The Horse and His Boy'', and ''The Magician's Nephew'' do indeed employ concepts associated with, respectively, Sol, Luna, Mercury, and Venus, far more often than chance would predict, but ''The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe'', ''Prince Caspian'', and ''The Last Battle'' fall short of statistical correlation with their proposed planets.<ref>{{cite web |last=Barrett |first=Justin L. |title=Some Planets in Narnia: a quantitative investigation of the ''Planet Narnia'' thesis |url=https://www.wheaton.edu/media/migrated-images-amp-files/media/files/centers-and-institutes/wade-center/Barrett_Narnia_web.pdf |year=2010|access-date=28 April 2018|publisher=Seven: an Anglo-American literary review (Wheaton College)}}</ref>