C.S. Lewis on the Importance of Reading Good Literature
C.S. Lewis, noted novelist, literary critic, lay theologian and essayist, advocates reading literature in his book an Experiment in Criticism. He is disappointed in fact when individuals only read important novels once. Reading a novel the second time for many on his list of incomplete readers is "…like a burnt-out match, an old railway ticket, or yesterday's paper" (Lewis, 2012, p. 2). Those bright alert people who read great works will read the same book "…ten, twenty or thirty times" during their lifetime and discover more with each reading, Lewis writes. The person who is a "devotee of culture" is worth "much more than the status seeker," Lewis continues on page 8.
That person, to Lewis, is reading "to improve himself, to develop his potentialities, to become a more complete man" (8). Younger people ("unhappy youth) apply what they read and learn from literature to an understanding of the "scruples, the rigorism… the distrust of pleasure" that his ancestors and "forebears" applied to the spiritual life. Learning about the "intolerance and self-righteousness" of people that went before -- through reading literature -- is and should be part of the maturation process, Lewis explains (10).
The "true reader" reads each work of literature seriously, not "solemnly or gravely," but rather "whole-heartedly" and that reader prepares himself (or herself) in a way that makes the reader very receptive to what has been written by great writers (Lewis, 11).
Reading Literature is a way of Learning History
Much fictional literature is historical in nature because writers use real-world themes and incidents, and therefore readers learn about events in the past that have relevance today. Mark Twain's iconic book the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, (AHF) is a case in point. In the novel, which takes place in the South in the middle 1800s and was published in 1885, uses the ugly word "nigger" 214 times. Of course that word was commonplace in Twain's lifetime, and the book is historically accurate on many levels. Adroit middle school and high school teachers have used the Twain novel to open students' eyes to the racial hatred and political realities of a divided nation after the Civil War. There is an open door to American history in this novel.
That said, in the eyes of some important literary figures...
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