The Catholic literary revival is a term that has been applied to a movement towards explicitly Catholic allegiance and themes among leading literary figures in France [1] and England, [2] roughly in the century from 1860 to 1960. This often involved conversion to Catholicism or a conversion-like return to the Catholic Church. The phenomenon is sometimes extended to the United States.
French authors sometimes grouped in a Catholic literary revival include Léon Bloy, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Charles Péguy, [3] Paul Claudel, Georges Bernanos and François Mauriac, [4] as well as the philosophers Jacques Maritain and Gabriel Marcel. [5]
The main figures who have been seen as constituting a revival of a leading Catholic presence in national literary life in England include John Henry Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton, Alfred Noyes, Robert Hugh Benson, Ronald Knox, Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh. Of these, Belloc was the only writer raised a Catholic; the others were adult converts.
J. R. R. Tolkien, although a convinced Catholic, "is not generally perceived to be one of the key protagonists of the Catholic literary revival". [6] In his writing, his own Catholic convictions and his use of Catholic themes are far less explicit than was the case for the other writers mentioned. There is, however, a growing tendency to look at Tolkien within the English Catholic literary tradition of his time. [7]
Although distinct, a movement towards explicit religious loyalty and themes in Anglican and Anglo-Catholic writers such as George MacDonald, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers is sometimes linked to the Catholic literary revival as a broader phenomenon. [8]
Due to the influence of Catholic literature from England in the United States, [9] the concept of "Catholic revival" is sometimes extended to include American authors such as Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, William Thomas Walsh, Warren Carroll, Fulton Sheen, Walker Percy, J. F. Powers and Flannery O'Connor. One of the early leaders of the revival in the United States was the editor and publisher Francis X. Talbot. [10]
The Catholic Poetry Society was founded in 1931 to further a tradition of Catholic poetry. They published Spirit: A Magazine of Poetry. [11]
Distributism is an economic theory asserting that the world's productive assets should be widely owned rather than concentrated. Developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, distributism was based upon Catholic social teaching principles, especially Pope Leo XIII's teachings in his encyclical Rerum novarum (1891) and Pope Pius XI in Quadragesimo anno (1931). It has influenced Anglo Christian Democratic movements, and has been recognized as one of many influences on the social market economy.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was an English writer, philosopher, Christian apologist, and literary and art critic.
Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Ronald Arbuthnott Knox was an English Catholic priest, theologian, author, and radio broadcaster. Educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a high reputation as a classicist, Knox was ordained as a priest of the Church of England in 1912. He was a fellow and chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford until he resigned from those positions following his conversion to Catholicism in 1917. Knox became a Catholic priest in 1918, continuing in that capacity his scholarly and literary work.
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early 20th century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic faith had a strong effect on his works.
Ignatius Royston Dunnachie Campbell, better known as Roy Campbell, was a South African poet, literary critic, literary translator, war poet, and satirist.
Joseph Pearce, is an English-born American writer, and as of 2014 Director of the Center for Faith and Culture at Aquinas College in Nashville, Tennessee, before which he held positions at Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in Merrimack, New Hampshire, Ave Maria College in Ypsilanti, Michigan and Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida.
Commonweal is a liberal Catholic journal of opinion, edited and managed by lay people, headquartered in New York City. It is the oldest independent Catholic journal of opinion in the United States.
Christian literature is the literary aspect of Christian media, and it constitutes a huge body of extremely varied writing.
John O'Connor (1870–1952) was an Irish Catholic parish priest in England who was the basis of G. K. Chesterton's fictional detective Father Brown. O'Connor was instrumental in Chesterton's conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1922. O'Connor also received the poet and painter David Jones into the church in 1921 and was associated with Eric Gill and the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic at Ditchling.
The St. Austin Review (StAR) is a Catholic international review of culture and ideas. It is edited by author, columnist and EWTN TV host Joseph Pearce and literary scholar Robert Asch. StAR includes book reviews, discussions on Christian art, contemporary Christian poetry, and erudite essays on all aspects of both past and present literature and culture from a traditionalist Catholic perspective. The magazine is based in South Bend, Indiana.
James Vincent Schall was an American Jesuit Roman Catholic priest, teacher, writer, and philosopher. He was Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Government at Georgetown University. He retired from teaching in December 2012, giving his final lecture on December 7, 2012, at Georgetown; it was entitled "The Final Gladness," and was sponsored by the Tocqueville Forum. has been described as "a reflection on different aspects of lifelong learning" by the National Catholic Register.
Robert Charles Asch is an English Catholic writer, literary critic, and scholar.
Mary Josephine "Maisie" Ward Sheed, who published under the name Maisie Ward, was a writer, speaker, and publisher. Maisie's brother Leo Ward was co-founder of the publishing house Sheed and Ward; Maisie took his place when Leo left to become a priest.
The Four Men: A Farrago is a 1911 novel by Hilaire Belloc that describes a 140-kilometre (90 mi) long journey on foot across the English county of Sussex from Robertsbridge in the east to Harting in the west. As a "secular pilgrimage" through Sussex, the book has parallels with his earlier work, the religious pilgrimage of his autobiographical The Path to Rome (1902). "The Four Men" describes four characters, Myself, Grizzlebeard, the Poet and the Sailor, each aspects of Belloc's personality, as they journey in a half-real, half-fictional allegory of life. Subtitled "a Farrago", meaning a 'confused mixture', the book contains a range of anecdotes, songs, reflections and miscellany. The book is also Belloc's homage to "this Eden which is Sussex still" and conveys Belloc's "love for the soil of his native land" of Sussex.
Stratford Caldecott was a Catholic author, editor, publisher, and blogger. His work spanned subjects as diverse as literature, education, theology, apologetics, economics, environmental stewardship, sacred geometry, art, and culture. His books include Secret Fire, Radiance of Being, Beauty for Truth's Sake, All Things Made New, and Not as the World Gives. He was a founding editor of the online journal Humanum and a contributor for several online and print journals. He was inspired by the Catholic author J. R. R. Tolkien and became known as a Tolkien scholar.
John Douglas Woodruff (1897–1978) was the editor of the Tablet and later chairman of the Catholic publishers Burns & Oates.
Francis Xavier Talbot was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who was active in Catholic literary and publishing circles, and became the President of Loyola College in Maryland. Born in Philadelphia, he entered the Society of Jesus in 1906, and was educated at St. Andrew-on-Hudson and Woodstock College. He taught for several years in New York City and at Boston College, before entering publishing as the literary editor of America magazine in 1923, of which he became the editor-in-chief in 1936. While in this role, he was also active in founding and editing several academic journals, including Thought, and establishing various Catholic literary societies and book clubs. During World War II, he was chaplain to a Catholic organization that previewed movies for the National Legion of Decency. He also supported Franco's rule in Spain because of its support of Catholicism and opposition to communism; he also supported the US war effort. He was described as one of the early leaders of the revival of Catholic literature in the United States.
J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of the bestselling fantasy The Lord of the Rings, was largely rejected by the literary establishment during his lifetime, but has since been accepted into the literary canon, if not as a modernist then certainly as a modern writer responding to his times. He fought in the First World War, and saw the rural England that he loved built over and industrialised. His Middle-earth fantasy writings, consisting largely of a legendarium which was not published until after his death, embodied his realism about the century's traumatic events, and his Christian hope.