Sacrament and the English Catholic Novel

Opis

Sacrament and the English Catholic Novel

Autorzy: Aleksandra Słyszewska

Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego

Christian art … is difficult, doubly difficult – difficulty squared, because it is difficult to be an artist and very difficult to be a Christian, and because the whole difficulty is not merely the sum but the product of these two difficulties multiplied by one another, for it is a question of reconciling two absolutes.

Jacques Maritain, “Christian Art”

When fiction is made according to its nature, it should reinforce our sense of the supernatural by grounding it in concrete observable reality. … If the Catholic writer hopes to reveal mysteries, he will have to do it by describing truthfully what he sees from where he is.

Flannery O’Connor, “The Church and the Fiction Writer”

The label of a Catholic poet would undoubtedly be too narrow. The matter of who someone is in life, as a person, is something slightly different than the matter of calling someone a “Catholic” or “atheist” poet. (translation – A. S.)

Czesław Miłosz, Rozmowy polskie

Table of Contents

Introduction .. . 9

Chapter 1

Towards a Catholic Literature . .. 13

1.1. Religion and Literature . . 13

1.2. Catholicism and English Literature up to 1960 . .33

1.3. Selected Writers Important to the Discussion

of the English Catholic Novel .  37

Chapter 2

The Sacraments of Christian Initiation .  . 55

2.1. The Sacrament of Baptism . .. 55

2.2. The Sacrament of Confirmation . .71

2.3. The Sacrament of the Eucharist .. . 88

Chapter 3

The Sacraments of Healing . . 103

3.1. The Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation . . 103

3.2. The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick . . 124

Chapter 4

The Sacraments at the Service of Communion .  139

4.1. The Sacrament of Holy Orders . .. 139

4.2. The Sacrament of Matrimony . . 160

Conclusions .  . 187

Bibliography . . 193

Index . .. 201