Tea at Trianon: A Theology of Fiction

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, March 26, 2022

A Theology of Fiction

I love how First Things either ignores, or is ignorant of, most current Catholic fiction writers. I wonder if many fine Catholic fiction writers are not well-known because they have been ignored by Catholic publications like First Things. I have to confess that I never heard of Sr. Mariella, who sounds wonderful. Or any of the authors listed below, except Gioia. From First Things:

A spirited debate has been going on for nearly a decade now, much of it in these pages, about the apparent dearth of religious ideas in recent American fiction. Because many of the interlocutors—among the most prominent are Paul Elie, Randy Boyagoda, Dana Gioia, and Gregory Wolfe—are Catholic, particular concern has been devoted to the role of Catholicism in contemporary literature. Where has faith in fiction gone? Have institutional barriers in MFA programs and publishing houses played a role in its disappearance? Is the problem that we lack Catholic voices in American letters, or that we too often fail to notice the ones we have? But no one has yet asked the logically prior question: Where did Catholic literary fiction come from in the first place?
One answer is astonishingly straightforward. At least some portion of the mid-twentieth-century Catholic literary boom in the United States can be attributed to the determined efforts of a single Benedictine nun.

Sr. Mariella Gable seems to have been forgotten now, at least outside of the College of St. Benedict, the small liberal arts college in Minnesota where she taught (with one four-year gap) from 1928 to 1973. But in the 1940s and 1950s, she was well known in Catholic circles as a sometimes-controversial teacher, editor, and critic. In her reviews and anthologies, Sr. Mariella helped to establish the careers of two writers who would go on to become household names in Catholic fiction: J. F. Powers, winner of the National Book Award for his novel Morte D’Urban in 1963, and Flannery O’Connor, who needs no introduction. She also brought stories by several Irish writers—including Mary Lavin, Bryan MacMahon, Frank O’Connor, and Seán Ó Faoláin—to American audiences for the first time.

Beyond championing individual writers, Sr. Mariella sought to raise the standards of Catholic fiction generally (she cites T. S. Eliot approvingly on this subject: “The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards; though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be determined only by literary standards”) and to broaden the definition of what could be considered “Catholic fiction” in the first place. Both efforts put her in the crosshairs of other Catholics, and the series of controversies that dogged her most productive years was likely a cause of the relative obscurity in which she dwells today.

But Sr. Mariella is worth remembering. Her often scathing indictment of early-twentieth-century Catholic fiction gives context and depth to the story of Catholic letters in this country. Her definitions of Catholic fiction, at once precise and capacious, could do much to clarify current debates. And her sharp-eyed criticism—which aimed at times to describe a form of fiction she felt was desperately needed but did not yet exist—opens up new vistas to those searching for faith in fiction today. (Read more.)