Lewis's Secret?

The BBC 1 programme, The Narnia Code, broadcast on Thursday 16th April contains, apparently startling claims of a hidden code contained within CS Lewis's Narnia Chronicles.

I will admit to being fascinated by the programme, literary studies being my thing and all. The gist of the theory is that each of the seven books parallels one of the seven planets in the medieval view of the cosmos. Dr Michael Ward, the first proponent of the theory makes a sound case, based partly on his study of Lewis's own study of medieval literature.

As I watched, I found I had to put my own lit-crit, mentality - with fully functioning intentional fallacy - on hold. Surely, if there is a hidden code, Lewis must have put it there. Later on, I thought about it a bit more. Why does it have to be a code? Perhaps it is easier to think of it as a series of correspondences. There would be no need for Lewis to have put them there, or even not to have put them there.

There seems to be an element of sensationalism about literary hostory. I'm tempted to blame Dan Brown, for obvious reasons, but actually this sort of thing has always been around: was Shakespeare gay? Was Marlowe Shakespeare? No doubt many famous (and not famous) authors have had their secrets, but they probably wanted to keep them secret. The contents of their work are usually much more mundane.