The Church and Literature

by Clarke, Peter; Methuen, Charlotte

• ISBN13: 9780954680992
• ISBN10: 0954680995
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-24
• Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Inc

Summary

Christianity and the book have been closely intertwined since the religion's very beginning. The Word itself takes a variety of literary forms: apologetic and polemic texts, sermons, poems, hymns, spiritual autobiography and Christian philosophical reflection. Likewise, many genres of novel, theatre and travel-writing often deal with Christian themes. This volume explores some of the ways in which the Church has both shaped and featured in the literature of different periods, with a particular emphasis on British literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The understanding of literature invoked here is a catholic one, reflecting the universality of Christianity itself, and allowing the exploration of a range of forms of writing emerging in the course of the Church's history. Among the authors discussed are Thomas More, John Milton, Isaac Williams, W. E. Heygate, Charles Dickens, Benjamin Disraeli, Edna Lyall, Silas and Joseph Hocking, Robert Browning, Charles Williams, Canon Patrick Augustine Sheehan, Dame Rose Macauley, D. H. Lawrence, W. H. Auden and Ellis Peters. Through this wide-ranging and impressive collection, The Church and Literature illuminates the enduring relationship between the Church and literary creation. Both literary scholars and historians with an interest in Christian culture will find this book invaluable. PETER CLARKE is Reader in Medieval History at the University of Southampton. CHARLOTTE METHUEN is Lecturer in Church History at the University of Glasgow.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
List of Illustrations	p. xi
List of Contributors	p. xii
List of Abbreviations	p. xv
Introduction	p. xix
Seeking Meaning behind Epistolary Clichés: Intercessory Prayer Clauses in Christian Letters	p. 1
Gregory the Great: Reader, Writer and Read	p. 12
Was Anyone Listening? Christian Apologetics against Islam as a Literary Genre	p. 35
Frivolity and Reform in the Church: The Irish Experience, 1066-116	p. 47
Ecclesiology on the Edge: Dante and the Church	p. 65
'No milkless cow': The Cross of Christ in Medieval Irish	p. 83
'Y Ganrif Fawr'? Piety Literature and Patronage in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Wales	p. 107
The Biblical Verse of Hans Sachs: The Popularization of Scripture in the Lutheran Reformation	p. 124
Thomas More's Confutation: A Literary Failure?	p. 134
Staging Vice and Acting Evil: Theatre and Anti-Theatre in Early Modern England	p. 156
William Perkins's The Arte of Prophecying: A Literary Manifesto	p. 170
Milton's Churches	p. 185
Anti-Catholicism and Obscene Literature: The Case of Mrs. Mary Catherine Cadiere and its Context	p. 202
English Convents in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature	p. 219
A Novel Resistance: Mission Narrative as the Anti-Novel in the Evangelical Assault on British Culture	p. 232
Reserve and Physical Imagery in the Tractarian Poetry of Isaac Williams (1802-65)	p. 246
W E. Heygate: Tractarian Clerical Novelist	p. 259
A Writer or a Religious? Lady Georgiana Fullerton's Dilemma	p. 271
Writing the Sabbath: The Literature of the Nineteenth-Century Sunday Observance Debate	p. 283
The Pastor Chief and other Stories: Waldensian Historical Fiction in the Nineteenth Century	p. 296
The Jesuit as Villain in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction	p. 308
Christian Dickens	p. 321
Disraeli's Novels: Religion and Identity	p. 337
Breadth from Dissent: Ada Ellen Bayly ('Edna Lyall') and her Fiction	p. 349
'Pulp Methodism' revisited: The Literature and Significance of Silas and Joseph Hocking	p. 362
Some Popes in English Literature c.1850-1950	p. 374
Jesuit Pulp Fiction: The Serial Novels of Antonio Bresciani in La Civiltà Cattolica	p. 385
Canon Patrick Augustine Sheehan: Priest and Novelist (Presidential Address)	p. 397
'Oh dear, if only the Reformation had happened differently': Anglicanism, the Reformation and Dame Rose Macaulay (1881-1958)	p. 423
The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Chamberlain and the Censorship of the Theatre, 1909-49	p. 437
The Trials of Lady Chatterley, the Modernist Bishop and the Victorian Archbishop: Clashes of Class, Culture and Generations	p. 449
The Cloister and the Crime: Medieval Monks in Modern Murder-Mysteries	p. 465
Piety and Polemic in Evangelical Prophecy Fiction, 1995-2000	p. 478
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