Lewis on Reader Response
C. S. Lewis writes the following in a letter to someone who had responded to his space trilogy, and especially That Hideous Strength: "When I've said that there is no allegory in it, and that there's nothing at all about the Second Coming in T.H.S., you may reply 'Well, that is what the books mean to an intelligent reader and what does it matter what you meant them to mean?--a point of view I wholly agree with."
What startling words from an author, and especially one as opinionated and traditional as Lewis. Most authors, it seems to me, are far more critical of readers who don't see what they intended them to see or see what they did not intend to put into the novel. Yet here's Lewis saying he wholly agrees that it is the intelligent reader who creates the meaning from the text, and implying that the author surrenders any right to criticize the reader the moment he publishes the novel.
I was just as surprised to hear my former colleague Jim Schaap says a similar thing in a recent Pro Rege article. Talking of reading Peter DeVries' Blood of the Lamb forty years after he had read it as a young man, he says, "Last summer when I had finished Blood of the Lamb again, I had read an entirely different novel. The story hadn't changed, but I had." Here is a writer, speaking as a reader, who is acknowledging that the same words read at different points in one's life will evoke entirely different responses. Did he mis-read it earlier? Not necessarily. Different readers or the same readers at different times can make from the printed symbols on the page quite different stories. AND IT IS COMPLETELY LEGIT.
I beat the drums for a Reader Response approach to teaching literature over the last 35 years, but have found that most English teachers are frightened by it. What do I test on? What's the right interpretation? Of course, we should note that Lewis says an "intelligent" reader (or reading). The story can't mean whatever I want it to, and it can be mis-read. But it certainly can mean more and different things than the author intended.
What startling words from an author, and especially one as opinionated and traditional as Lewis. Most authors, it seems to me, are far more critical of readers who don't see what they intended them to see or see what they did not intend to put into the novel. Yet here's Lewis saying he wholly agrees that it is the intelligent reader who creates the meaning from the text, and implying that the author surrenders any right to criticize the reader the moment he publishes the novel.
I was just as surprised to hear my former colleague Jim Schaap says a similar thing in a recent Pro Rege article. Talking of reading Peter DeVries' Blood of the Lamb forty years after he had read it as a young man, he says, "Last summer when I had finished Blood of the Lamb again, I had read an entirely different novel. The story hadn't changed, but I had." Here is a writer, speaking as a reader, who is acknowledging that the same words read at different points in one's life will evoke entirely different responses. Did he mis-read it earlier? Not necessarily. Different readers or the same readers at different times can make from the printed symbols on the page quite different stories. AND IT IS COMPLETELY LEGIT.
I beat the drums for a Reader Response approach to teaching literature over the last 35 years, but have found that most English teachers are frightened by it. What do I test on? What's the right interpretation? Of course, we should note that Lewis says an "intelligent" reader (or reading). The story can't mean whatever I want it to, and it can be mis-read. But it certainly can mean more and different things than the author intended.
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