| Summary: | Based on Paul Ricœur’s conceptual analysis of the Gospels’ parables, this paper will aim at showing how C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) resorted to parable telling as a way of metaphorizing his apologetic discourse. By revisiting foundational texts (cosmogonic stories, temptation scenes in a garden, repetition of lapsarian stories, experiences of inner conversion) inserted in his fiction (The Pilgrim’s Regress, The Chronicles of Narnia, Perelandra), Lewis appropriated that aesthetic and religious heritage which he reactivated by introducing his personal experience and his aesthetic, philosophical and religious quest in it. That experience echoed universal experience and Saint Paul’s and Saint Augustine’s conversion stories. Owing to its exemplarity, the performativity of the Lewisian parable can be inscribed within a network of similar human experiences (Ladrière). Therefore it is overdetermined by its intertextuality and the different subjective layers it refers to: the original experience, the author’s own experience and the reader is invited to experiment the same experience. The evangelical parable describes a two-fold movement: the kingdom of God is staged through Jesus’ story which itself is inscribed within men’s history then becoming the history of salvation (both seen as universal and a tell-tale story). To a lesser extent, Lewisian stories describe that oscillation: various protagonists are staged both in a singular and universal story.
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