Challenging the view that Catholic literature is a thing of the past, Literature and Catholicism in the 19th and 20th Centuries compellingly maintains that Catholic literature is timely and significant, offering illuminating truths to contemporary audiences of all religious persuasions. David Torevell, the editor of the volume, draws together a collection of essays from ten scholars that complement each other well. Together, the essays articulate and advance the sacramental worldview of Catholic literature, which aims to open the eyes of readers to God’s grace-giving presence in all things. Linking these articles is the argument that Catholic literature, in providing practical applications, “truths to live by” to today’s readers, does not ignore the natural in favor of the supernatural, but instead squarely fixes the transcendent within the earthly, viewing the human life cycle as one of divine beauty, imbued with nuanced meaning, and whose purpose transcends physical death.
While Catholic literature may praise the gilt edge of the godly limning creation, irradiating it from within, Adam Schwartz holds that it does not make concessions for worldly zeitgeists rippling through society. In his essay “‘A Standing Temptation to the Intelligentsia’: The Catholic Literary Revival in Twentieth-Century Britain,” Schwartz contends that the eyes of faith through which Catholic authors see remain fixed on eternal wisdom, a lens that members of the British Catholic literary revival in the early 20th century adopted for its reliability amidst the turmoil of wars and shifting political movements dividing nations. Whereas some literati were dismayed by the conversions of writers like T.S. Eliot, whose Anglo-Catholicism was seen as resistant to advancement. Schwartz maintains that the Catholic writers of the time were the true pioneers, doggedly upholding high culture and literary excellence by nurturing their traditional, and undeniably Catholic, roots, and by eschewing fads.
Focusing on the experience of Catholic writers of the period who were denied the critical attention they deserved, Schwartz conveys the feelings of frustration inspiring their work, and highlights the emotional core of their contributions, which stem from the the experience of being marginalized (an experience that many contemporary readers will be familiar with). Countering misperceptions of Catholic writers, Schwartz notes that rather than preventing them from living in the present reality, the writers’ fidelity to a Catholic worldview allowed them to more profoundly relay the complex emotionality of daily life, its losses and gifts, in their work. These writers were able to convey the great significance of ostensibly small happenings, which are integral to the overall human experience, and are made efficacious, meaningful, when understood as moving one towards a higher purpose.
Daniel Frampton continues the momentum of this subject in his essay, “‘The Starry Streets that Point to God’: G.K. Chesterton’s ‘Theology of Participation’ in The Napoleon of Notting Hill.” Frampton approaches the subject from the angle of G.K. Chesterton’s work, which similarly valued the simple and mundane, the personal and local, over events of international importance, finding God’s omnipresent vastness in even the most remote corners. In highlighting Chesterton’s understanding of God through a Catholic, sacramental lens, Frampton reveals the heightened relevance of Catholic literature in elucidating God’s accessibility to all; the experience of spiritual faith is not limited to the elite. In examining the plot of The Napoleon of Notting Hill, in which Chesterton’s characters defend their homeland, wholeheartedly fighting for what they hold dear. Frampton touches on a theme of Catholic literature of relevance to countless readers now: the love of a cause beyond oneself, the timeless longing to return to one’s roots, and the desire to preserve what is beloved for being familiar. The essay, then, supports the anthology’s goal of pointing to Catholic literature as an especially perceptive expression of perennial human yearnings.
Literature and Catholicism in the 19th and 20th Centuries succeeds in overturning commonly held assumptions about Catholic literature, most effectively when discussing individual authors’ sense of personal revelation, and its embodiment in their literary work. In the essay “The Call of Strange Beauty in the Poetry and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins,” Torevell further dismantles misconceptions of Catholic literature as outmoded and far-removed from contemporary life. He does this by investigating the innovative style and Ignatian spirituality that characterizes Gerard Manley Hopkins’ work, and by detailing the universal aspects of the poet-priest's struggle.
Hopkins is not presented in pat terms as a man of unwavering conviction and perfection, but rather, as a person wrestling with the real challenges of living in the world when one is not of the world, discerning a vocation amidst opposing callings, all the while reckoning with man’s fallen nature. Hopkins’ verse addresses this discord through uses of language that, while seemingly unconventional or inharmonious, come together harmoniously, capturing the dialectical aspect of true beauty, and nature for what it is, balancing the “regularity and irregularity” that so transfixed Hopkins (11).
Thus, in both the suffering and joy, the old and new, there is God, the beginning of it all- this is the ultimate inspiration behind Catholic literature, the anthology comes to show, elucidating how Catholic literature enfolds humans in the otherworldly being of God. As each reader and writer encounters words, they encounter God, uniting themselves with Him: “The Word becomes ‘uttered’ in poetry, bringing about the fleshing of God, as in the incarnation” (11). This, the anthology underscores, shows that “the way forward is the way back,” advancing the notion that Catholic literature is, indeed, a celebration of life, which is enriched when shaped not by fluctuating social mores, but by the eternal God, as envisioned by the Catholic imagination (25).
Kathryn Sadakierski is an independent scholar.
Kathryn Sadakierski
Date Of Review:
January 19, 2023
