An Experiment in Criticism.

LEWIS, C.S.

Item Number: 140478

London: Cambridge University Press, 1961.

First edition of Lewis’ work on the art of literature. Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with a tear to the front flap.

Is literature to be valued because it tells us truths about life, or as an aid to culture, or as an end to itself? C.S. Lewis believed the last; that literature is above all an art to be enjoyed. His experiment here consists of reversing the traditional approach to literary criticism and judging literature by the way it is read, suggesting that the surrender of the reader to the work in which he is engaged has something in common with love, moral action, and intellectual achievement: "in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself."