Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association. Vol. XXVII. [Containing: Psycho-Analysis and Literary Criticism].

The imaginative experience of Joy, as he called it, was central to the career of C. S. Lewis: it informed his work as literary scholar, writer, and religious thinker. Cognizant that psychoanalytic concepts held implications for the meaning of this experience, Lewis here offers a critical commentary on these implications with regard to literary imagery, suggesting possible conflicts between a view of humankind that is psychoanalytically-derived and one which is aesthetically informed.