Exploring Fantastical Liminality in C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia

Abstract

The current dissertation seeks to provide an analytical study that aims at exploring the significance of fantastical liminality in C.S Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. To fulfill this aim, reading the novel through the lens of Arnold van Gennep’s and Victor Turner’s theory of liminality will be of great pertinence in explaining the experiences of the characters in the context of fantastical limianlity. The characters, as this study contends, can be transformed in a secondary world by using a limen or a portal. The confrontation between the two worlds needs a portal or a door which serves as a means for the characters’ transportation. The portal, this research seeks to demonstrate, is considered as a state of liminality which serves as a threshold that leads to spawn a fantastical world that is different in space and time. In this regard, the threshold makes an impact on the characters as it makes them experience a state of liminality and expose them to confront a completely different world from theirs.