C. S. Lewis and the Art of Reading: The Uses of Scholarship and the Pleasures of the Text

Abstract

C. S. Lewis was one of the major scholars of literature in the 20th century. His contribution to the art of reading deserves a re-consideration and is therefore reconstructed and analysed in this paper. Topcis that are highlighted in this connection are the types of literary scholarship most useful to a proper understanding of old texts, the types of readers that exist, the controversies in which Lewis engaged concerning the interpretation of Milton, the importance of philological knowledge for literary scholars as well as the pitfalls of literary criticism. In many respects, C. S. Lewis is at odds with currently fashionable approaches to literature-and thus provides a welcome challenge to dominant paradigms of reading texts.

Keywords

• pleasures of the text
• hermeneutics
• literary theory
• literary scholarship
• literary criticism
• types of readers
• storytelling
• Milton criticism