Читать книгу The Neglected C. S. Lewis - Mark Neal - Страница 24

Lewis presses his literary attack against Tillyard by means of what he calls the shared imagination. “It is his business, starting from his own consciousness; whatever that may happen to be, to find that arrangement of public experiences, embodied in words, which will admit him (and incidentally us) to a new mode of consciousness.”⁵⁵ Sound rhetorical theory is audience-centered; it seeks to describe reality in a way that one’s audience comes to see and to be persuaded by the author’s argument. To do this well the author should know something of the hearer’s point of view. He or she appeals to experiences and values that are shared between them and draws on these to make a point. “The common world with its nights, its oaks, and its stars, which we have all seen, and which mean at least something the same to all of us, is the bank on which he [the author] draws his checks.”⁵⁶ An appeal is made by means of these common experiences. Then the author, utilizing these shared experiences, seeks to go beyond what was previously known by author or reader. This could hardly be an expression solely of the state of the author’s own mind.