Contemporaneity, Religious Instruction and Music in Dryden’s “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” and C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia*

Abstract

Summary In English literature, we sometimes find biblical messages that have been adapted to the contemporary reader, and may be interpreted as veiled religious instructions such as John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. The present study delves into this idea by presenting and comparing John Dryden’s neoclassical poem, “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day”, with C.S. Lewis’s fantasy heptalogy, The Chronicles of Narnia. Both texts contain the Christian doctrine of faith and morals and fulfil the requirements for the Catholic catechism, given their respective historic and cultural context. The way that Dryden and Lewis incorporate music in their texts follows a common pattern that serves as a unifying factor for this structured analysis, and justifies a comparative study.