| C.S. Lewis is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented authors of the twentieth century. Over the last fifty years, a focus on his Christian, apologetic, and fiction writing have dominated the primary studies of his oeuvre. However, his work in the field of literary criticism has been overlooked, misappropriated, and often simply ignored. Focusing on An Experiment in Criticism, I propose to re-examine Lewis's critical methodology with specific attention to Lewis's critical position on hermeneutics. Using the position I will draw from this text, and other texts of similar purpose, I will then compare Lewis's position to that of a noted post-structural phenomenologist, Paul Ricoeur. The examination of these two positions will reveal that Lewis has a great deal to offer contemporary and post-structural scholarship in terms of the creation and attainment of meaning from textual sources. |
