Turkish influence?

[Deniz]

I have just finished The Magician's Nephew and the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and just a few hours ago watched the movie. I could not help noticing several, almost too many, Turkish and Ottoman influences in everything I've witnessed so far.

-Turkish Delight (most obvious one)

-Aslan is Turkish for lion (also rather obvious)

-In the movie, the tents at Aslan's soldiers' camp great resemblence Ottoman and Turkish war tents (see http://womansworld05.atalink.co.uk/_inl ... /269-1.jpg)

-Peter is named "Peter the Magnificent" while Suleyman, a most powerful Ottoman sultan, was known as Suleyman the Magnificent.

-The image preceding The Horse and His Boy is largely Middle Eastern in style although I really can't effectively describe why or how it resembles it any further. I'm sure most of you understand this premise, however.

My real question is, did C.S. Lewis have some sort of Turkish or Ottoman background? Maybe spent some time there or studied it or whatnot. If not, why is this Turkish influence so prevalent throughout the series? I have only read the first two books, but I'm sure there are many other examples in the remainder of the series also. Has anyone else noticed these or other links to Turkey in the Chronicles of Narnia?

[Leslie]

Lewis never visited Turkey. He probably read about it (he read about everything) but Ottoman history and/or culture was not his specialty.

[David]

To Europeans, for many years, the Middle East represented what literary critics call Other. The world of Islam was a culture that was used to contrast with European culture. They had different religions, were (generally) racially different, and--this is the sticky part--had, as the Europeans understood it, different forms of government and systems of ethics. The Ottoman world was seen as crooked, decadent, tyrannical, oppressive, in opposition to the freer more democratic worlds of Europe.

So when Lewis (and Pauline Baynes) used such images, they were plugging into familiar cultural contrasts. Narnia is like Europe, Calormen is like Turkey.

There standard book on this is by a Christian Palestinian writer, the late Edward Said (pronounced sigh-ODD), called Orientalism.

[Theo]

[Deniz]

[Leslie]

[David]

Denzin--if you read The Horse and His Boy you'll find this kind of European/Turkish dichotomy very clearly. As for the Turkish influence, I'm not so sure. Certainly Peter is Peter the Magnificent, like Sulemon the Magnificent, but this could be purely coincidental and we might be better to read nothing into it.

As for the oriental or middle-eastern appearance of some of the items in Narnia, this would not be so much Lewis and Baynes. And the Europeans who fought the Muslims in Spain and the Middle East did pick up a lot of things from them--I'm sure they borrowed some of their designs for weapons and military structures. Baynes might have encountered these images in her research.

As for Aslan--well, I don't know. But I don't think Lewis' choice of that name suggests he wanted to make Narnia "Turkish." I think he just found a good-sounding name and stuck with it.

[Rosie Cotton]

[Deniz]

[Theo]

[WolfVanZandt]

[carol]

[Theo]

[johnstevens]

Hi,

This really is a very interesting topic, its one of the least explored areas of the books. Its actually shocking just how little research has gone into it.

Reading about the similarities listed by our friend in this post its actually added more to the list I had already made.

However, one aspect he missed was that one of the character's is called Caspian, now this name is known as "Khazar" or "Hazar" everywhere outside of England and refer's to the Caspian Sea.

Its a Turkish word and would have been just a coincidence but I feel its more as there are clear other links to a Turkish influence.

I'll list the other similarities I found later.

Regards

[Iris]

I'm sorry...I know I'm bringing up an old topic, but my attention was caught when you were explaining what Turkish Delight was. You see, I'm half Armenian but I've never been there, and I don't even know much about it. It was my dad who was Armenian and I never met him. So I just thought that was cool. Maybe I'll look into that US company that makes it and I could try it. I always wondered what it was when I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe...although after watching Edmund stuff his face with the gooey stuff in the movie I'm not sure it sounds too appetizing. [/quote]