 This example suggests that it is (often) better to conceive the background in epistemic terms. (But maybe not always; as Lewis points out, there is a contested critical tradition that uses psychoanalytic views to interpret literary texts, as in the claim that Hamlet had an Oedipus Complex. Such a claim is probably best understood in terms of  Analysis 1.)  Lewis’s Analysis 2 provides such an epistemic orientation. It treats “background” as beliefs that are overt in the author’s community, where 