Christianity and Literature
Lewis here writes about Christianity and literature, specifically what is Christian literature and how does it differ with secular literature. He read this paper to a religious society at Oxford fairly early in his Christian walk. The question he seems to be answering is, "What is Christian literature?" His main argument is that the rules for good literature are the same for both Christian and non-Christian. He writes, "The rules for writing a good passion play or a good devotional lyric are simply the rules for writing tragedy or lyric in general;" He goes on to use a typical Lewisian styly argument by discussing a Christian cook book, "Boiling an egg is the same process whether you are a Christian or a Pagan."
He then adds to his argument a very important point, that the Christian view of literature must be that attitude of excellence. He uses two points, "I admit freely that to believe in the Incarnation at all is to believe that every mode of human excellence is implicity in His historical human character: poethood, of course, included." His second point goes with this one, "Applying this principle to literature, in its greatest generality, we should get as the basis of all critical theory the maxim that an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did nor exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom." As we look at both of these points his argument becomes clear, we are to reflect the image of Christ's character and beauty in the literature we write.
Lewis wrote about this concept in Letters of C. S. Lewis "Creation as applied to human authorship seems to me to be an entirely misleading term. ...