CS Lewis published An Experiment in Criticism in 1961, and its as close to a general statement of interpretive principles as he ever wrote. The book’s basic premise is that evaluative criticism often hinders our reading experience. In matters of taste, Lewis proposes, we should spend more time thinking about HOW we read rather than WHAT we read. An Experiment in Criticism is a provocative (and short) book, and it’s not just polemic. Lewis’s gracious and direct style is one of the book’s main attractions. Here are some things I learned…
1. Total skepticism–the fear that something bad will get through your reading detection system–is actually damaging in the long run because it compromises your ability to learn.
2. E.D. Hirsch distinguishes between “meaning” (authorial intention) and “significance” (our application). Lewis calls these palls “receiving” and “using.” The few–the real readers among us–lay themselves open to receive what the work has to offer.
3. There are two kinds of literary realism: realism of presentation (touches of the “real” that even works like The Faerie Queene include) and realism of content (think George Eliot’s Middlemarch). A literary work can fall into one category or the other, both or none. We are in an age that esteems realism of content, but this preference is a relatively short blip in the radar screen of literary history.
4. Here’s how to really evaluate an author: people who love the author give you reasons for their approval that are more about *them* than the author OR can’t articulate their affection in any reasonable way OR proclaim virtues that really aren’t virtues at all. Needless to say, it would take awhile to back up your “This is trash” argument if you took Lewis’s claim to heart.
5. Don’t go chasing messages. This is a classic “using” over “receiving” move, and so-called literary readers are more guilty of it than the non-literary.
6. Escape isn’t a bad virtue, and fantasy isn’t immature. The part of fairy tales that appeal to children SHOULD appeal to adults too. It’s just that kids are the only ones who haven’t had their receptors to those myths stamped out.
7. Reading literature cannot make you gain love, virtue, or knowledge, but it CAN participate in the process whereby you attain all three. Reading is a way of expanding your world, of seeing with 1000 eyes.