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Abstract
Most critics have assumed that the talking beasts of Narnia are beasts. A few have interpreted the Chronicles of Narnia as support for animal subordination to humans, since in Genesis, God gives Adam and Eve dominion over the animals. Such usage is not altogether warranted. Although correspondences can be found between The Magician's Nephew [MN] and the first three chapters of Genesis, Lewis does not clearly designate the roles of Adam and Eve in his novel. Two human adults are described as the first king and queen of Narnia, but various characters play the roles of Adam and Eve in the temptation portion of the novel, and as I will argue, the Talking Beasts serve as Adam and Eve in the creation narrative. That they do so demonstrates that the Talking Beasts are not mere animals but are the Narnian equivalent of human beings, evolving in an accelerated evolutionary process similar to the normal-speed evolution Lewis describes for the human species in The Problem of Pain.