ABSTRACT
The emergence of beast tales in the earliest days of European literature and their almost continuous popularity ever since emphasize the fact that man’s relationship with the rest of the animal kingdom strikes a deep chord of imaginative recognition in the human consciousness. To the earliest composers of folk-tales, the animals were interesting both for their proper nature and for the magical qualities with which they had been endowed in tribal religion and ritual. The Talking Beasts of Narnia have traditions and ceremonies, but the authors see little of their private lives except that of the Beavers, which is totally humanized. The traditional symbolic use of the animal in literature lends itself very easily to adaptation in the form of the personal quest – the search of the individual for personal freedom or fulfilment, the achievement of a scheme of personal integrity or morality.
