Is there any literary background for the concept of a bull with the head of a man (like a reverse minotaur) in C.S. Lewis's Narnia book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?
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2Questions about mythology are off-topic on SFF:SE and should be asked hereValorum– Valorum2025-02-10 04:29:30 +00:00Commented Feb 10 at 4:29
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10Narnia is not mythology. If questions about the inspiration of a literary work are not on topic, why do they have a tag? @Valorumuser14111– user141112025-02-10 07:00:07 +00:00Commented Feb 10 at 7:00
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5Yeah, questions about the inspiration/background behind a piece of SF/F literature are on-topic here. I mean, if it gets closed, I'll happily migrate the question to Literature (where it might get a better answer, actually), but why rob this site of a good question?Rand al'Thor– Rand al'Thor ♦2025-02-10 07:02:32 +00:00Commented Feb 10 at 7:02
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2@fez Sad that this site focuses so much on author's intentions when those are largely considered irrelevant in the study of literature and when there's often so much more to say than that. If Lewis didn't say anything about the inspiration behind this particular very-minor character, does that mean the question is unanswerable? Not at all - a serious analysis or knowledge of older literature/mythology could give rise to a really interesting answer. But I guess SFF.SE people wouldn't care about such an answer.Rand al'Thor– Rand al'Thor ♦2025-02-10 08:15:57 +00:00Commented Feb 10 at 8:15
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1(resume) or more importantly that it's something that discerning readers can pick up on to get more texture in the story (e.g. if you knew the Wicker Man allusion). It's not just "what the author was thinking", but what allusions to broader culture that readers can get (even subconsciously, perhaps). Similarly, if this is the first appearance of the "reverse minotaur", perhaps this was Lewis's invention. Perhaps, even to propagate forward.Living in the past– Living in the past2025-02-10 13:39:07 +00:00Commented Feb 10 at 13:39
1 Answer
Following up on information from comments (and elsewhere): for reference (from here ), the quotation from LW&W is
There was also a unicorn, and a bull with the head of a man, and a pelican, and an eagle, and a great Dog.
tl;dr Lewis was a scholar of medieval literature, wrote essays about Dante's work, and was also influenced by Dante in his other fictional work. It is extremely likely that he would have been familiar with Dante's version of the minotaur, which arguably was lower-half-bull, upper-half-man.
From Wikipedia, HT @Valorum:
Ovid's Latin account of the Minotaur, which did not describe which half was bull and which half man, was the most widely available during the Middle Ages, and several later versions show a man's head and torso on a bull's body — the reverse of the Classical configuration, reminiscent of a centaur.[17] This alternative tradition survived into the Renaissance, and is reflected in Dryden's elaborated translation of Virgil's description of the Minotaur in Book VI of the Aeneid: "The lower part a beast, a man above/The monument of their polluted love".
According to Borges's The Book of Imaginary Beings,
Dante, who was familiar with the writings of the ancients but not with their coins or monuments, imagined the Minotaur with a man’s head and a bull’s body (Inferno, XII, 1-30) [the quote is from pp. 100-101, Borges also mentions it on p. 14]
To be completely honest, I don't see this in Project Gutenberg's translation of the Inferno (below); this page says
A common subject of early Greek art, the Minotaur is usually depicted as an animalistic man with a bull's head and tail; some have argued that Dante intended the features to be reversed, though. [emphasis added; no ref given]
However, if you dig back to a 14th c. Italian manuscript of the Inferno in the Bodleian library at Oxford you do indeed get a picture of a bull with the head [and torso!] of a man ...
Canto XII, 10-25
Such was the passage down the precipice high.
And on the riven gully’s very brow
Lay spread at large the Cretan Infamy*
Which was conceived in the pretended cow.
Us when he saw, he bit himself for rage
Like one whose anger gnaws him through and through.
‘Perhaps thou deemest,’ called to him the Sage,
‘This is the Duke of Athens drawing nigh,
Who war to the death with thee on earth did wage.
Begone, thou brute, for this one passing by
Untutored by thy sister has thee found,
And only comes thy sufferings to spy,’
And as the bull which snaps what held it bound
On being smitten by the fatal blow,
Halts in its course, and reels upon the ground,
The Minotaur I saw reel to and fro;
* The minotaur.
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Thanks for the background that the "reverse" (of what we commonly think of now) as a minotaur was common.Living in the past– Living in the past2025-02-11 01:05:21 +00:00Commented Feb 11 at 1:05
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It was a fun rabbit hole to go down for a little while ...Ben Bolker– Ben Bolker2025-02-11 01:06:26 +00:00Commented Feb 11 at 1:06
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I guess the one other interesting thing is that Lewis mentions the centaur-like minotaur in Aslan's army. But the evil queen has a (named) minotaur in her list of allies. Not sure if Lewis meant anything by these differences or was just riffing colorful mythical/literary tropes and didn't realize what two sides of the coin he had done.Living in the past– Living in the past2025-02-11 01:07:52 +00:00Commented Feb 11 at 1:07
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I just finished (re)reading the novel, and actually Lewis mentions minotaurs in the service of the White Witch at least three times. So, he definitely puts the conventional bull-heads in the baddie column. I didn't see any more detail on the opposite version, other than the one little piece of text where Aslan's army was described visually and had a man-head bull.Living in the past– Living in the past2025-02-11 12:48:44 +00:00Commented Feb 11 at 12:48
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If Lewis did mean anything by the difference, my guess would be an allusion to someone controlled by their baser, more animalistic instincts (the minotaur) being more likely to fall into evil by following their impulses and desires while someone able to rationally examine their desires, actions, and the aftermath should be aligned with good.Bookwyrm– Bookwyrm2025-03-16 05:05:32 +00:00Commented Mar 16 at 5:05
