《The Reading View Of C.S.Lewis》

The20th century,"the century of reading", the reader and reading became the center of literary study. But it seems that theorists’passion for reading theory couldn’t save readers’growing indifference to reading. As a writer and scholar with the spirit of the classical, C. S. Lewis’ reading theory has strong penetrability and can help us to rethink various reading problems nowadays, although his works had been published before reading theory became a distinguished school.This paper is on C. S. Lewis’ reading theory. It has six chapters. The introduction reviews the research status of Lewis. The first chapter is a general description about Lewis’reading theory, which gives a detailed analysis of the reading theoretical issues and core concepts, such as the distinction between the "literary reading" and "non-literary reading", the "usability reading" and "receptive reading". The second chapter concentrates on Lewis’analysis of the role of imagination and fantasy in reading. By comparing Freud’s "daydream" theory, I try to discuss the following questions:how is the text material used to build daydream in reading with fantasy; what is the effect of fantasy type reading; whether are all the readers daydreaming types and so on. The third chapter focuses on Lewis’reading ethics. Lewis does not consider the author’s intention as the absolute standard of text interpretation, but he attaches importance to the value of the text’s "original meaning" and always believes that readers have the ability to pursue the "original meaning". For Lewis,"original meaning" containing author’s intention and text intention is a Person which provides a "negative reference" for text interpretation. The fourth chapter analyses the value of literary criticism in Lewis’eyes. He thinks that critics’first duty is to guide the reader to text rather than to criticism itself. The epilogue tries to explore Lewis’ philosophical foundation of reading theory and his theoretical aim. For Lewis, reading is a way of existence. His discussion about the problems of reading reflects the problems of contemporary thought.