Castle-Building and a Child's Creativity

In "The Meanings of Fantasy," C. S. Lewis labels the activity of "castle-building" as the genesis of all fantasy. This activity, which can be equated simply with the common task of everyday day-dreaming, can come in different forms, including the Egoistic (in which one is the center and hero of one's own story), or the Disinterested (in which the imaginer is not a participant in the fantasy).

One of the most sophisticated stages of castle-building that one can reach is described by Lewis on pages 52 and 53:

"A further stage is often reached by children, usually in co-operation. They may feign a whole world and people it and remain outside it. But when this stage is reached, something more than the reverie has come into action: construction, intervention, in a word, fiction, is proceeding."

Leave it to Lewis to credit children with having the advantage in one of the highest forms of creative genius, the very form, I might add, that he and Tolkien, indeed our own God, displayed at the beginning of Narnia, Middle Earth, and the universe, respectively. The act of "disinterested" world-creating is, in fact, reminiscent of Lewis' own childhood, where he and his older brother, Warnie, created, populated, and developed the fantastic world of Boxen. Jack (Lewis)'s contribution to Boxen was Animal-Land, a country completely peopled by anthropomorphic animals. Warnie created India, a land of men with very lucrative trade-routes.

In this section about castle-building, Lewis makes very close ties between the work of celebrated, brilliant fantasy fiction, and the playroom imaginings of a pair of children. Is he elevating the status of a child's play? Downgrading classic fantasy literature to much simpler, pre-pubescent terms? Or simply illuminating the rest of us to the fact that Disinterested castle-building is the purest form of imagination in that it echoes the wonder, the creative energy, and the un-selfcenteredness of uncorrupted children? My suspicion is the latter.