An Experiment in Criticism
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Overview
Why do we read literature and how do we judge it? C.S. Lewis’ classic An Experiment in Criticism springs from the conviction that literature exists for the joy of the reader and that books should be judged by the kind of reading they invite. He argues that “good reading,” like moral action or religious experience, involves surrender to the work in hand and a process of entering fully into the opinions of others: “in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.” Crucial to his notion of judging literature is a commitment to laying aside expectations and values extraneous to the work, in order to approach it with an open mind. Amid the complex welter of current critical theories, C.S. Lewis’ wisdom is valuably down–to–earth, refreshing, and stimulating in the questions it raises about the experience of reading.
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- The Few and the Many
- False Characterisations
- How the Few and the Many Use Pictures and Music
- The Reading of the Unliterary
- On Myth
- The Meaning of ‘Fantasy’
- On Realisms
- On Misreading by the Literary
- Survey
- Poetry
- The Experiment
Top Highlights
“The distinction can hardly be better expressed than by saying that the many use art and the few receive it.” (Page 16)
“Let us make our distinction between readers or types of reading the basis, and our distinction between books the corollary. Let us try to discover how far it might be plausible to define a good book as a book which is read in one way, and a bad book as a book which is read in another.” (Page 1)
“He reads as he also visits art galleries and concert rooms, not to make himself acceptable, but to improve himself, to develop his potentialities, to become a more complete man.” (Page 7)
“This attitude, which was once my own, might almost be defined as ‘using’ pictures. While you retain this attitude you treat the picture—or rather a hasty and unconscious selection of elements in the picture—as a self-starter for certain imaginative and emotional activities of your own. In other words, you ‘do things with it’. You don’t lay yourself open to what it, by being in its totality precisely the thing it is, can do to you.” (Page 14)
“It had better not have any excellencies, subtleties, or originalities which will fix attention upon itself. Hence devout people may, for this purpose, prefer the crudest and emptiest ikon. The emptier, the more permeable; and they want, as it were, to pass through the material image and go beyond. For the same reason it is often not the costliest and most lifelike toy that wins the child’s love.” (Page 15)
Professor Lewis’ motive is admirable, since he would like all books to have a chance, and he is right to oppose the kind of criticism which regards a work with the air of a suspicious frontier guard examining the passport of an unfriendly alien.
—The Spectator
Lewis is provocative, tactful, biased, open–minded, old–fashioned, far–seeing, very annoying, and very wise. He believes that literature exists for the joy of the reader, and that all who come between the reader and his joy...may kill the very art which they seek to protect.
—Church Times
This is a plea for a resolutely low-church attitude to criticism...for those in favour of happiness but distrustful of politics and the elevated disapproving mind, and his book is a charter and a liberation.
—The Tablet
- Title: An Experiment in Criticism
- Author: C.S. Lewis
- Publisher: HarperOne
- Publication Date: 2013
- Pages: 152
- Christian Group: Evangelicals and Anglican
- Resource Type: Literature
- Topic: Literary Criticism
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century and arguably one of the most influential writers of his day. He was a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Oxford University until 1954, when he was unanimously elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, a position he held until his retirement. He wrote more than thirty books, allowing him to reach a vast audience, and his works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year. His most distinguished and popular accomplishments include Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and the universally acknowledged classic Mere Christianity. Read more about his life and legacy.