First Advisor

Joseph Long

Date of Award

2014

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Philosophy and University Honors

Department

Philosophy

Subjects

English literature -- Catholic authors -- History and criticism, Romano Guardini (1885-1968). Ende der Neuzeit. English -- Criticism and interpretation

DOI

10.15760/honors.88

Abstract

In the early part of the 20th century German Catholic theologian and cultural critic, Romano Guardini, published The End of Modernity, outlining the conceptual shift of self-identity and cosmology from Antiquity to Modernity. Characterizing modernity as turning upon a false self-identity termed “mass man.” This false image of life furthers the individual person’s fragmentation, and deafens their ability to hear the Catholic voice. Walker Percy’s familiarity with Guardini is most explicit in The Last Gentleman where Percy represents the difficulty of hearing the call of Catholicism. Recently, Paul Elie and Dana Gioia have pointed out the lacking literary presence of Catholic authors in American culture, sparking debate among literary critics like Gregory Wolfe. I hold the position that this was foreseen by the Catholic intellect of the early twentieth century, articulated by Romano Guardini and employed in the fiction of Walker Percy. This paper focuses on articulating the difficulties faced by Catholic literature almost half a century ago and placing them in the context being discussed by contemporary critics. Concluding that if a Catholic novelist’s job is to make belief believable, a more productive and illuminating question is whether contemporary Catholic novelists face the same, if not more or less, difficult task of communicating the Catholic voice than their mid-twentieth century predecessors.

Rights

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Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/11944

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