Truth in Fiction

Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions of Literary Engagement

Welcome! This project is intended to collect descriptions of literature’s “spiritual” effects within the lives of real readers—experiences such as self-transcendence, reverence, and inexpressible realizations–in order to enhance understanding of how individuals discover and attune themselves to spiritual realities through literary engagement.

Literature’s capacity to produce “sudden spiritual manifestations,” as James Joyce describes them, or fiction’s ability to “baptize” a reader’s imagination, as C.S. Lewis reflects in his autobiography, is at once widely cited yet little understood.

What is it about the experience of literary reading that can provoke readers to spiritual perspectives, insights, and understandings?

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Truth in Fiction Video Summary

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“In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself . . .Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

-C.S. Lewis

Truth in Fiction

Exploring the Spiritual Dimensions of Literary Engagement

Truth in Fiction Video Summary

“In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself . . .Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”-C.S. Lewis

“In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself . . .Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do.”

-C.S. Lewis