Between Form and Faith: Graham Greene and the Catholic Novel

by Martyn Sampson

Overview

What is a “Catholic” novel? This book analyzes the fiction of Graham Greene in a radically new manner, considering in depth its form and content, which rest on the oppositions between secularism and religion. Sampson challenges these distinctions, arguing that Greene has a dramatic contribution to add to their methodological premises. Chapters on Greene’s four “Catholic” novels and two of his “post-Catholic” novels are complemented by fresh insight into the critical importance of his nonfiction. The study paints an image of an inviting yet beguilingly complex literary figure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823294671
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	08/03/2021
Series:	Studies in the Catholic Imagination: The Flannery O'Connor Trust Series
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Martyn Sampson earned his Ph.D. from the University of the West of England, Bristol, where he taught English. He served as Director of the 2018 and 2019 Graham Greene International Festivals.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Uninstructed Catholic | 1

1 The Ache of Modernism: Theological Aesthetics in Greene’s Nonfiction | 15

2 Catholic Novels: Religious Anxieties in Brighton Rock and The Heart of the Matter | 38

3 Creator of Heaven and Earth:
Catholicism and the “Catholic” in The Power and the Glory and The End of the Affair | 80

4 Entertaining the Second Vatican Council:
Creative Theologies in The Honorary Consul and Monsignor Quixote | 119

5 Theory and Theology: Graham Greene’s Remapping of Common Ground | 161

Conclusion: Where Now? | 195

Acknowledgments | 201

Notes | 205

Bibliography | 233

Index | 261

Editorial Reviews

Sampson engages with a truly impressive breath of reference, offering perceptive insights on Greene’s ‘Catholic’ novels’, together with theoretical provocations that will generate fruitful debate.

Literature and Theology

Martyn Sampson expands our understanding of both Graham Greene’s Catholic imagination and the status of theological aesthetics by focusing on the formal dimensions of Greene’s literary production over the easily abstracted theological content of his work. Sampson uses the term ‘impulses’ to interrogate the imaginative pressures of faith, belief, and doubt that drove Greene’s work throughout his long literary career. He argues, in the end, that Greene’s conception of what a Catholic novel might be is more about a genre that brings the secular and the religious closer than apart, an embrace of possibility and risk at the heart of the human condition. What is remarkable in this study is Sampson’s deep reading of the discourses of critical theory placed in conversation with the vast range of Greene’s scholarship over the past decade. Between Form and Faith is an impressive achievement—Mark Bosco, S.J., Georgetown University, author of Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination

Here is a book of genuine intellectual heft. In his analysis of Graham Greene, Martyn Sampson brings together the insights of contemporary critical theory with those of modern theology to turn the notion of a ‘Catholic Novel’ on its head, treating faith not as a body of beliefs external to the fictions and so to be affirmed or denied, but as a dimension of the novels’ imagined worlds. This insightful and innovative book should become essential reading for literary and theological scholars.—Richard Greene, University of Toronto

It''s an awesome feat of scholarship, wide-ranging in its sympathies, comprehensive in its coverage, and unafraid to tackle critical orthodoxies on Greene. I particularly admired the section on his literary criticism and the way Martyn Sampson related that to Graham Greene’s own creative practices; I''ve not seen that aspect of his output done before with such detail and lucidity. Overall a formidable combination of theological and theoretical analysis, seasoned with literary sensibility and that vanishing commodity known as common sense.—Emeritus Professor Neil Sinyard of the University of Hull, UK; author of Graham Greene: A Literary Life

From the Publisher

...Sampson’s book is impressively researched and presents a unique approach to Greene’s fiction. One hopes that it invigorates additional scholars to explore the importance of form in Greene’s work.

Christianity & Literature

Martyn Sampson expands our understanding of both Graham Greene’s Catholic imagination and the status of theological aesthetics by focusing on the formal dimensions of Greene’s literary production over the easily abstracted theological content of his work. Sampson uses the term ‘impulses’ to interrogate the imaginative pressures of faith, belief, and doubt that drove Greene’s work throughout his long literary career. He argues, in the end, that Greene’s conception of what a Catholic novel might be is more about a genre that brings the secular and the religious closer than apart, an embrace of possibility and risk at the heart of the human condition. What is remarkable in this study is Sampson’s deep reading of the discourses of critical theory placed in conversation with the vast range of Greene’s scholarship over the past decade. Between Form and Faith is an impressive achievement

Mark Bosco

Here is a book of genuine intellectual heft. In his analysis of Graham Greene, Martyn Sampson brings together the insights of contemporary critical theory with those of modern theology to turn the notion of a ‘Catholic Novel’ on its head, treating faith not as a body of beliefs external to the fictions and so to be affirmed or denied, but as a dimension of the novels’ imagined worlds. This insightful and innovative book should become essential reading for literary and theological scholars.

Richard Greene