Print Price: $104.50

Format:
Hardback
216 pp.
239 mm x 157 mm

ISBN-13:
9780195177152

Publication date:
February 2005

Imprint: OUP US

Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination

Mark Bosco

Series : AAR Academy Series

Much has been written about Graham Greene's relationship to his Catholic faith and its privileged place within his texts. His early books are usually described as "Catholic Novels" - understood as a genre that not only uses Catholic belief to frame the issues of modernity, but also offers Catholicism's vision and doctrine as a remedy to the present crisis in Western civilization. Greene's later work, by contrast, is generally regarded as falling into political and detective genres. In this book, Mark Bosco argues that this is a false dichotomy created by a narrowly prescriptive understanding of the Catholic genre and obscures the impact of Greene's developing religious imagination on his literary art.

Reviews

• "Graham Greene's Catholic Imagination establishes new paradigms of considerable importance. Time, I feel certain will justify Father Bosco's reading of the late Graham Greene." --America
• "It is the merit of Bosco's book that the Catholic dimension of Greene's novels is always in his mind, as he takes the reader through the novels at a gentle canter and explores their theological and political implications. He brings sincerity and enthusiasm to his study of this important English novelist.'--Gene D. Phillips, S.J., author of Graham Greene: The Films of His Fiction
• "Mark Bosco has written a landmark study of the full sweep of Graham Greenes fiction. Most previous work has focused on Greenes Catholic novels to the neglect and misunderstanding of his later post-Catholic fiction. What is distinctive and revisionist about Boscos book is his argument that the periods of Greenes work represent different phases of his Catholic sensibility and in particular his argument that the later novels grow out of Greenes engagement with issues vital to Vatican II Catholicism and to the emergence of liberation theology. What makes this argument utterly convincing is his richly nuanced reading of the novels."--Albert Gelpi, Professor Emeritus of English, Stanford University