Narnia Fans » The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Book News http://www.narniafans.com Voyage of the Dawn Treader Narnia Movie News Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:39:01 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Ben Barnes talks Dawn Treader Book versus Film http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7861 http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7861#comments Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:58:12 +0000 Paul Martin http://www.narniafans.com/?p=7861 In an interview about Dorian Gray, Ben Barnes was asked about the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  Specifically, what may have changed between the book and the film.  This is a question that we all have about the film, and though many fans would like to see the film shot page for page with the book, movies are completely different animals.  Sometimes books don’t translate very well into movies as they are written.  In our own minds they seem as movies, though, and based on each of our own imaginations, when we read Narnia, each of our experiences is going to be different.  So how do you take C.S. Lewis’ very loose, open descriptions to film and make everyone’s version?  You really can’t.  But what about a story like that found in this book?  Well, on film, it needs more than the book has.  Here’s what Ben has to say about it.

Let’s talk about the “Dawn Treader” movie. I know you can’t reveal any spoilers, but what’s in the movie that’s different from the book?

Ben Barnes: They’ve stolen a couple of ideas from some of the later ["Chronicles of Narnia"] books. [It’s] a very difficult book to adapt, because it’s very episodic. It’s chapter by chapter. They go on the voyage, they go to one island, a bit more voyage, another island, a bit more voyage, another island. It’s very satisfying to read; every chapter by chapter, it’s very exciting. But it has no real through line. And so they have to kind of steal other elements to sew it all together. I think they’ve done it in a really clever, unobtrusive way.

What’s interesting is the first thing he says here: they’ve stolen a couple of ideas from some of the later (emphasis added) books.  The questions I have now are: What books and what ideas from those books?  Anybody have ideas for what it could be?

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]]> http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7861/feed 59 First Look at The Dawn Treader! http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7181 http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7181#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 13:58:20 +0000 Paul Martin http://www.narniafans.com/?p=7181 We’ve got a picture of the Dawn Treader, which is currently being built at Cleveland Point in Australia.  It’s a beautiful ship that I look forward to seeing in action.  It’s still incomplete, but it’s really getting close.  Check out the detailing on the side of it.


The Dawn Treader at Cleveland PointLarge, dark wood panels with elaborate golden swirls are taking shape on the far end of Cleveland Point as the set construction gets under way for filming of The Dawn Treader, the next instalment of the Chronicles of Narnia films.
Although most of Cleveland Point reserve is still fully accessible for picnics and the playground and green space opened for temporary parking, the best view of our local Hollywood set is with a glass of wine in hand at The Lighthouse Restaurant, which will be open throughout the whole Narnia experience.

With the cast to arrive for filming in September, The Lighthouse owner and manager Tim Varitimos said the atmosphere had been buzzing with speculation.

“It’s an added attraction for the kids, as well as the parents. They come down to our beautiful bay and have a good look at what’s going on,” he said.

“Initially we were a bit concerned that the production might encroach on our space, but we’ve got plenty of extra parking to compensate for the land they’re using and our customers are loving combining a great meal here with hearing the latest on what’s going on with the film.”

It’s a beautiful ship as described by C.S. Lewis in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader book: “It was a picture of a ship – a ship sailing straight towards you. Her prow was gilded and shaped like the head of a dragon with wide-open mouth. She had only one mast and one large, square sail which was a rich purple. The sides of the ship – what you could see of them where the gilded wings of the dragon ended-were green.”

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]]> http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7181/feed 20 Texas State Professor finds Lost Lewis Manuscript http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7123 http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7123#comments Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:51:26 +0000 Paul Martin http://www.narniafans.com/?p=7123 In the last few years, we’ve had a lot of lost manuscripts begin to surface from the likes of C.S. Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien.  From The Children of Hurin to The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, the wealth of literature from Tolkien has been expanded greatly, and it’s about time that something new from Lewis has been discovered.  Communications Professor Steven Beebe of Texas State discovered a lost manuscript fragment in Oxford University’s Bodleian Library.

While there is no evidence that Tolkien ever started work on the project, the beginnings of a book that was to be a collaborative effort have been uncovered.  According to a letter Tolkien wrote to his son Christopher in 1944, he had planned to write a book with Lewis called Language and Human Nature.  The collaborative effort, with Lewis being the author of the Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien being the author of The Lord of the Rings, would have been a joy to read, I am sure, regardless of the subject matter.

“What is exciting is that the manuscript includes some of Lewis’s best and most precise statements about the nature of language and meaning,” Beebe said. “Both Lewis and Tolkien wrote separately about language, communication, and meaning, but they published nothing collaboratively.”

Beebe found the fragment in a small notebook Lewis used. In the notebook were early fragments of The Magician’s Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, along with several unpublished thoughts and ideas. Beebe discovered the fragment after turning the notebook upside down and reading from back to front.

“I was so surprised to find Lewis writing about language and meaning, using examples and illustrations not found in any of his published work,” Beebe said. “I knew I had discovered something interesting. But at the time, I didn’t know I had found something important.”

Beebe determined it was the start of the lost book after several years of additional research into Tolkien and Lewis. In the manuscript, Lewis consistently refers to multiple authors instead of writing in the singular.

The Lewis estate must give its permission for the work to be published. However, Beebe is confident permission will be given and the manuscript will add new insight about Lewis’s ideas about the nature of language.

The article Beebe wrote documenting his discovery, “Language and Human Nature Manuscript Fragment Found: C. S. Lewis On Language and Meaning,” will be published next year in the journal Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review. The journal publishes scholarship that focuses on the work of seven prominent Twentieth Century British authors, including both Lewis and Tolkien.

This is very exciting, and I look forward to reading it someday.  I hope whatever it is, finds a way into publication.  In particular: the Narnia snippets. It’d be really interesting to read those and see what changed.

In addition, the Professor teaches a class on Lewis:

Beebe teaches a course about Lewis and communication called “C. S. Lewis: Chronicles of a Master Communicator,” both on the Texas State campus in San Marcos and in a special class that will be taught this July and August at Oxford University. When teaching the class in Oxford rather than meeting in a in a classroom, most sessions are taught at various sites throughout Oxford, including Lewis’s home, the Kilns; Magdalan College, the college where Lewis taught; as well as the room in the Eastgate Hotel where Lewis first met his wife, Joy Davidman. Their love story was the subject of the movie Shadowlands, in which Anthony Hopkins played Lewis and Debra Winger portrayed Joy.

“My goal in teaching the course in Oxford,” said Beebe, “is to bring Lewis to life and have students discover Lewis’ approach to communication. Discovering Lewis’ unpublished ideas about language and human nature adds depth to our discussion of his approach to communication,” said Beebe. (San Marcos Mercury)

Mark Sommer located the press release from Texas State. Pardon the duplicate material:

What if two of the most famous and widely read 20th Century authors who have each individually sold millions of copies of their books had written a book together?

C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia Chronicles and Screwtape Letters, and J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, had planned in the 1940s to write a book together about Language. According to a letter written by Tolkien in 1944 to his son Christopher, the collaborative book was to be called Language and Human Nature. A news release from their publisher announced that the book was scheduled for publication in 1950. It was, however, never published. Scholars have thought, until now, that it was never started.

Steven Beebe, Regents’ Professor and Chair of the Texas State Department of Communication Studies, discovered the opening pages of the unpublished manuscript in the Oxford University Bodleian Library and has recently documented that the manuscript was the beginning of the previously believed to be unwritten Lewis and Tolkien book.

Although C. S. Lewis started the book, there is no evidence that Tolkien began work on the project.

“What is exciting” said Beebe, “is that the manuscript includes some of Lewis’s best and most precise statements about the nature of language and meaning.  Both Lewis and Tolkien wrote separately about language, communication, and meaning, but they published nothing collaboratively.”

The article Beebe wrote documenting his discovery, “Language and Human Nature Manuscript Fragment Found: C. S. Lewis On Language and Meaning,” will be published next year in the Journal Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review. The journal Seven publishes scholarship that focuses on the work of seven prominent 20th Century British authors including both Lewis and Tolkien.

The partial book manuscript Beebe found was in a small notebook on which Lewis had written the word “Scraps.” Included in the tattered notebook are early fragments of two Narnia Chronicles, The Magician’s Nephew and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader along with unpublished ideas about a variety of topics.

Beebe discovered the book fragment by turning the little notebook upside down and reading from back to front.

“I was so surprised to find Lewis writing about language and meaning, using examples and illustrations not found in any of his published work,” said Beebe. “I knew I had discovered something interesting.But at the time, I didn’t know I had found something important.”

It was several years after finding the manuscript after doing additional research about Lewis and Tolkien that Beebe concluded that the manuscript was the beginning of the lost book.

In Lewis’s own distinctive handwriting the opening sentence clearly indicates that Lewis was writing a book about the nature and origins of language—the topic of the planned Lewis and Tolkien book. Further evidence that the manuscript is the beginning of the coauthored book project is the fact that Lewis wrote about “our statements” and used the phrase “authors consider,” rather than writing in the first person singular as Lewis often did. Because the newly discovered manuscript is copyrighted, it is not yet available for publication.Permission must be granted by the Lewis estate, and that process is in progress. When it is published, Beebe believes the manuscript will add new insights about Lewis’s ideas into the nature of language, with a special emphasis on the oral aspects of language, and about how meaning occurs when humans communicate.

-via Texas State University

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]]> http://www.narniafans.com/archives/7123/feed 10 Narnia Limited Edition Giclee Prints of BBC Paintings by Andrew Skilleter http://www.narniafans.com/archives/6954 http://www.narniafans.com/archives/6954#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 23:42:32 +0000 Paul Martin http://www.narniafans.com/?p=6954 Andrew Skilleter is the artist behind the covers of the BBC radio editions of The Chronicles of Narnia.  He asked me to mention that he’s made available, by popular demand, a limited run of 250 of each title as special prints of his artwork.  If you missed it, we posted a story about the exhibition that is still going on, along with some of the art work, here: BBC Narnia Cover Art Exhibition UK.  The art is available to purchase at the artist’s website, here: Andrew Skelleter’s Narnia BBC Paintings.

The depth and impact of the originals are brought to life for the first time and are a unique collector’s item for now and the future. Each approved, numbered and signed by Andrew Skilleter.

Fine Art Lifetime Giclee Prints privately produced by, and only available directly from, the Artist.

Each is reproduced to the highest standard from the original acrylic paintings, which are the copyright of the artist, and first commissioned for the BBC Radio Collection, UK, between 1990 and 1997. Please see the Narnia Gallery. The work is currently on exhibition. For the story behind the prints, please click here.

  • Lifespan of over 75 years.
  • Reproduced with white surround on the renown Hahnemuhle heavyweight archival acid-free matt paper
  • Each produced, approved, titled, numbered and signed by the artist.
  • Each comes with a stylish certificate of authenticity signed by the artist
  • Each print is wrapped in acid free tissue, sealed in a plastic bag and mailed flat with robust reinforced rigid packaging to guarantee delivery in perfect condition, so you can order in complete confidence.

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]]> http://www.narniafans.com/archives/6954/feed 2 Narnia Book Cover Redesigns by M.S. Corley http://www.narniafans.com/archives/6950 http://www.narniafans.com/archives/6950#comments Thu, 21 May 2009 23:21:43 +0000 Paul Martin http://www.narniafans.com/?p=6950 M.S. Corley's The Last BattleThere’s an artist that has become quite well known for his redesigns of book covers.  Most notibly, the Harry Potter series.  Unfortunately it doesn’t appear that they’ll ever see publication, but that doesn’t mean we cannot hope that some of his designs will one day see print.  I had been watching his blog to see if he was ever going to do his take on The Chronicles of Narnia books.  Well, last weekend he posted them.  I’ve included a glimpse of one of the covers, as it is my favorite book in the series: The Last Battle.  You can see his art work on his blog (Narnia Redesign) or at his flickr account.

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]]> http://www.narniafans.com/archives/6950/feed 0 C.S. Lewis, Narnia Books now available for Amazon Kindle 2 http://www.narniafans.com/archives/3683 http://www.narniafans.com/archives/3683#comments Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:40:58 +0000 Paul Martin http://www.narniafans.com/?p=3683 Amazon.com has today announced the release of their new edition of Kindle. With that announcement comes new additions to the library of books available for Kindle, including many works written by C.S. Lewis.

As detailed in the Kindle 2 press release:

The Kindle Store currently offers more than 230,000 books — up from 90,000 when Kindle launched. Books from numerous popular authors have been added since the original Kindle launched, including John Steinbeck, C.S. Lewis, Beverly Cleary, Martha Stewart, Terry Goodkind, and Spencer Johnson.

Available now for Kindle are books written by C.S. Lewis including all seven Chronicles of Narnia, A Year with C.S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics, God in the Dock, and The Screwtape Letters. More will follow as Amazon is adding more to the service every day.

With this device, you can take Narnia with you, wherever you go. Not only that, but you’ll be able to search the books for your favorite quotes, and quickly find references to things throughout the Chronicles.

Also available for Kindle is Paul F. Ford’s Companion to Narnia, so you’ll have a great Narnia encyclopedia at your fingertips as well.

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