Pala taivasta, pala maata

Englantilainen katolinen romaani 1900-luvulla

• Susanna Itäkare Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74597

Abstract

A Piece of Heaven, a Piece of Earth. The English Catholic Novel in the Twentieth Century.

The genre of the Catholic novel emerged in the mid-nineteenth century: first in France, and soon after that in England. Since then, there has been constant literary debate on the genre, its definitions, and its meaning. Most definitions have been based on the author’s denomination: it has been claimed that one has to be Catholic in order to be able to write a Catholic novel. However, (post)modern, textually orientated literary criticism fundamentally questions these author-centered definitions.

The present article argues that the ca¬tegory of the Catholic novel is meaningful and useful, provided that it is defined on the grounds of the novel´s textual, Catholic iden¬tity. This identity is regarded as a fairly stable construction, on one hand based on Catholic doctrine and on the other hand aimed at tran¬scendence and sacred (as they are understood in Catholicism). This hypothesis is applied to a well-known English novel, Evelyn Waugh´s Brideshead Revisited (1945). Through a close reading of the novel it is maintained that the novel produces a Catholic identity, primarily in the complex character of Lord Sebastian Flyte. He represents both Fall and Grace, eros and agape, sainthood and sin. In other words, analogical imagination – especially Catholic sacramentality – turns out to be central to the novel´s Catholicism.

The latter half of the study is focused on a post-conciliar novel, David Lodge´s How Far Can You Go? (1980). The novel tells a tragicomic story about several English Catholic students, who all grow up during and after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). The famous Council modernized and diversified the Church and its practices quite radically, and the novel crystallizes this change through the characters. As a narrative Lodge´s text is postmodern, secularizing the Faith and questioning the ultimate religious authority of the Catholic Church. Consequently, it is very hard for the reader to activate a stable, faithful Catholic identity through the text. Instead, the novel problematizes both the notion of identity and the identity of Catholicism.

Some critics have argued that the Catholic novel ceased to exist after Vatican II due to the loss of homogenous Catholic culture. The latter part of the statement is true, but to sound the death knell for the genre is definitely premature. The genre of the catholic novel, which has always been under discussion, has nowadays truly divided itself into texts that do not seem to have much in common. Still, the article suggests that there is a certain Wittgensteinian family resemblance between traditional, conservative, liberal, and progressive Catholic novels. Although there is no single feature all the texts share, there are several features they may share partly (e.g. representing belief in Christ). This new post-conciliar genre of the postcatholic novel is not perhaps as “heavenly” as its predecessor used to be as it is more interested in so-called secular themes (e.g. feminist and ecological issues). Nevertheless, Catholicism has always used analogical imagination, so there is, in fact, nothing revolutionary here.