Catholic Literature and Secularisation in France and England, 1880-1914 - Hardcover

Brian Sudlow

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0719083117 ISBN 13: 9780719083112

Publisher: Manchester University Press, 2011

Synopsis

This book is the first comparative study of its kind to explore at length the French and English Catholic literary revivals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These parallel but mostly independent movements include writers such as Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, J.K. Huysmans, Gerard Manley Hopkins, G. K. Chesterton, and Lionel Johnson. Rejecting critical approaches which tend to treat Catholic writings as exotic marginalia, this book makes extensive use of secularisation theory to confront these Catholic writings with the preoccupations of secularism and modernity. The book compares individual and societal secularisation in France and England and examines how French and English Catholic writers understood and contested secular mores, ideologies and praxis, in the individual, societal and religious domains. It also addresses the extent to which some Catholic writers succumbed to the seduction of secular instincts, even paradoxically in themes which are considered to be emblematic of Catholic literature. The breadth of this book will make it a useful guide for students wishing to become familiar with a wide range of such writings in France and England during this period. It will also appeal to researchers interested in Catholic literary and intellectual history in France and England, theologians, philosophers and students of the sociology of religion.

About this title

Review:

This book makes a valuable contribution to the development of a burgeoning discourse concerning the relationship between the modernist project, Christian faith,and the Arts Modern Language Review, 2012 -- .

About the Author:

Brian Sudlow is a Lecturer in French and Translation Studies at Aston University

About this edition

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0719083117
• ISBN 13: 9780719083112
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256