Preview

An Experiment In Criticism, By C. S. Lewis

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
78 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
An Experiment In Criticism, By C. S. Lewis
The short Essay, An Experiment in Criticism, by C.S. Lewis brings to light many new perspectives to how people read and experience literature. Throughout the essay Lewis works to give the message that; how good a book is doesn’t depend on the quality of writing but on the reader. He begins by defining two types of readers- the “literary” and the “non-literary”- which he uses through the rest of his essay to categorize different traits for treating literature.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    While reading The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, I encountered a few questions concerning his view on Ethical Innovation and the dilemma conditioners face. It was a difficult book with many ideas that didn’t come completely clear to me at times.…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Literature can be expressive. It can be expressed in many different ways. Some use writing, some use pictures and print, or even dramatic and musical works of art. In this essay I will be using the Reader-Response Approach to analyze a piece of literature. I have chosen the short play I’m Going! A Comedy in One Act, by dramatist Tristan Bernard. I will include why the literary work captured my interest, how it made me feel, and how it has formed or change my connection with literature.…

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Francine Prose’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read: How American High School Students Learn to Loathe Literature”, the author is trying to explain why high school students are not asked to read more quality pieces of literature now a days. In my opinion I agree with Prose because I think the texts we read in high school are not challenging and not a lot of students enjoy the readings because they cannot relate. Prose uses the rhetorical strategy of degrading the books high school students are reading and she uses her own personal experiences to support her argument.…

    • 956 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    While most people think reading comments from critics will contaminate the article because students may read with prejudice and not be able to think about article itself. In his article “Disliking Books”, Gerald Graff argues that reading critics will help shape their mind to a literary sensibility. In Graff’s personal experience, critics didn’t ruin the excitement of literature. Instead, critics inspired him to think more deeply about the book and relate it to modern life. In college, he fought for his degree and read some books. Deep-down he felt these books were boring and tasteless. Gerald Graff had no interest in serious books before he got to college. But everything changed. When he read “The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain and the critics’ debate about the end of the novel, his interest was awakened, he reread this novel with surprise and passion. One of the critics implied Twain was cheating at the end of book. Graff thought cheating was a thing that usually happened to students; he never thought a famous author would make a mistake that even undergraduate students could demonstrate. Through this experience, he found the critics’ debate at the end novel was quite interesting. He became one of the critics, attended…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The novel, that most accessible, democratic of literary forms, must establish its contract with its reader. It may be helped or hindered by all sorts of extraneous influences, cover design,…

    • 1424 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    humanities final essay 3

    • 2852 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The power of literature really has no limits: it enables authors as well as readers to make significant revelations and, in turn, embarks us on a journey that leads certain meaning, often in the form of a powerful enlightenment because we are obliged to see the world from the author’s perspective and this leads to the reader’s questioning of meanings.…

    • 2852 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Catch 22 Reader Response

    • 2356 Words
    • 10 Pages

    A reader response criticism complies with my beliefs of Literature, in that everyone who reads a book comes from a figuratively different place than any other reader. Since everyone is a unique individual, the impressions, and meanings of passages are to be interpreted by these readers in their own unique and individual…

    • 2356 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The entire semester defining what Literature is has being the course’s quest. Literature is always changing; its definition has developed and changed from time to time. To find an exact definition of what is literature, it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. There have been several attempts to decipher this puzzle, in “What Is an Author” written by Michael Foucault, he emphasizes on the idea that an author exists only as a function of a written work. The author's name holds considerable power and serves as an anchor for interpreting a text. And “On the Sublime” written by Longinus, the writer states that the sublime implies that man can, in emotions and in language, transcend the limits of the human condition. This research paper consists in identifying the elements of literature by comparing two major pieces of work. In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley warns that with the advent of science, natural questioning is not only futile, but dangerous. In attempting to discover the mysteries of life, Frankenstein assumes that he can act as God. He disrupts the natural order, and chaos ensues. In “Young Goodman Brown”, Hawthorne explores the nature of imagination and reality in this mysterious story by allowing the reader to actively question the reality of the night's events. He combines a multitude of elements into it creating a sense of mystery. The short story follows Goodman Brown’s journey resulting in his loss of faith. Literature allows the reader to feel, experience, and inhabit a character or place. It goes beyond the scope of everyday fiction, reaches new insights and allows the writer to reason with the audience.…

    • 1383 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster is a book that explains there is more to literature than just a few words on a paper or a few pages in a book. Thomas Foster’s book portrays a relatable message to a wide based audience. This book is relatable for two reasons, the way it is written and the examples it uses. The book is written in a conversational manner, as if the reader was in a group discussion about books and writing. As for the examples, they are informative, descriptive, relative, and entertaining.…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Many people say there is a book for everyone, the one book that will transcend what some might think of as the paper barrier and influence the person’s life because of its appeal. Critics eagerly manage to head dive into writing in order to analyze the details within the intricate messages authors intend to convey with their writings, which engulfs the beauty that absorbs readers as they grow through the journey that is reading a book. However, it tends to be complicated for less avid readers to be able to recognize that authors leave a part of themselves within the writings, and that these “horcruxes” reveal much about intimate concepts authors embrace or their beliefs. This concepts can be multiple from the broad spectrum of topics, including the reflection of cultural influences and concern for contemporary issues…

    • 1651 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Handmaids Tale

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “The true measure of a texts value lies in its ability to provoke the reader into awareness of its language and construction, not just its content”.…

    • 1221 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The reader response-response approach to critical literature “asks you to “connect” with literature, to find a personal link or imaginative entry into a story, poem, or play.” (Clugston, P. 413) Normally for any reader, this is one of the main characteristics the reader is performing. The reader by default is looking for some form of connection to the literary work he/she may be reading. Therefore, when the reader begins to make these connections, they are already utilizing the reader-response perspective.…

    • 490 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Destructors

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Second the readers’ ability to discern characters flaws and complexity, in the literary fiction while staying with the stereotypical boundaries of the commercial fiction. Third is the ability of readers’ to recognize that the overall theme of the literary fiction challenges the norm of our society in the literary fiction whilst the overall theme of the commercial fiction revolves around escapism. Lastly, the conclusion of literary fiction gives the readers an unsettling and unsatisfactory ending. Conversely is true for the rewarding, satisfying, and a happy ending for the commercial fiction. Thus it is important for the readers to be educated to be able to differentiate between the literary and commercial…

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Say Yes

    • 1894 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Before I started my reader-response paper, I read an article by Steven Lynn to help me know the right approach to a reader-response. There is two ways that I can approach this “by describing how readers should respond to the text or by giving the critics’ own personal response or by giving the critic’s own personal response.” I found this to really help me understand the concept of a reader-response paper. I decided to mostly give my own personal response but react on how some other readers might react.…

    • 1894 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    William Lyon Phelps was a brilliant writer and teacher who treasured books and understood the significance of how the printed word can affect a person. Phelps co-taught at Harvard, and then moved to Yale to teach an English class full time. He was given countless awards for his strong intellect such as Life magazine doing an overview of his whole life, founding the Elizabeth club and more. Phelps had given the speech “The Pleasure of Books” on a radio broadcast in 1933. This speech discusses the importance of books and what role they play in human existence. Phelps uses metaphors and repetition to convince the public that books are a fundamental and essential part of human functions and daily life.…

    • 591 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays