Sunday, 28 April 2024

Of stories

I don’t think that C S Lewis’s view was that stories of any kind - Biblical, fairy tales or otherwise - should be inflicted on children. The book I recommend on the subject of fairy tales is “The Uses of Enchantment” by Bruno Bettelheim. Essentially (and I am not really doing justice to the argument) fairytales can fulfil an important function in the psychological development of a child or adolescent. There are many examples in modern children’s fiction and elsewhere which achieve the same objective. But just as Lewis suggested that when he grew to like hock, he did not abandon lemon squash, so too (I suspect) he would argue against mere replacement of one thing with another: for that is not growth.

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