Fans of the Chronicles of Narnia series will be in for a treat this week as Belmont University, in partnership with Narnia on Tour, will present the Past Watchful Dragons Conference – a scholarly look at faith and culture within the literature of C.S. Lewis, to be held Nov. 3-5 at the Belmont Campus in Nashville, Tenn. ChristianPost.com reports…
The event will feature a diverse group of 45 Lewis researchers and experts ranging from recognized scholars such as Christopher Mitchell (Director of the Marion E. Wade Center and Assistant Professor of Theology at Wheaton College) and Bruce Edwards (Associate Dean and Professor of English at Bowling Green State University) to undergraduate students from Belmont as well as a number of panels discussing the works of writers associated with Lewis such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Dorothy Sayers.
Zach Kincaid, director of Narnia on Tour (a 25-date academic lecture tour), agrees that films such as The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe are bringing due attention to books such as the Chronicles of Narnia, but hopes that events like Narnia on Tour can go beyond the “movie hype” and bring greater interest to the “rich texts” of Lewis and many other authors.
“With Narnia on Tour, we don’t necessarily want to react to film and the hype created by it,” Kincaid told The Christian Post, “but rather we want to use that hype and in some ways be a counter to it. With Narnia on Tour, you’re not going in there for a 10 minute power-packed preview of the film – this is a 30 minute lecture and response time to get you thinking about the issues in the text.”
