I had a chance to reread your Seen & Unseen piece on Mr. Darcy:Pagan Hero?. It was occasioned by reading "30 Great Myths About Jane Austen", Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite. There the authors take the negative to their "myth" #18: "Jane Austen was a Christian moralist". The authors did affirm Jane was a devout Christian, and cited CS Lewis and Irene Collins. But anchored their argument around their understanding of "moralist". Their argument wasn't convincing to me because they seem to expect Austen, as Christian literary artist, to act as an explicit moral arbiter within the work. I find this to be a very narrow understanding of the literary craft. Austen's nuance and understanding of human nature, as well as her realism, was used by the authors to make their case that somehow Austen couldn't inhabit the "world as it is", without an implicit secularized moral worldview. I thought it was a bit silly, especially their use of Lydia Bennett, seemingly accepted back into the Bennett fold, with only Elizabeth's bemusement that Lydia could continue on as before.
I think the virtue ethics case you've made is far more convincing and dynamic then the cramped "moralist" strawman presented by these authors!
Yes I think the whole argument about a writer not being a 'moralist' unless they have an overtly moralistic tone is deeply flawed. I have my issues with Claudia Johnson's scholarship as you can imagine! This puts me in mind of the podcast episode Radio Maria England recently did with Holly Ordway on her new spiritual biography of Tolkien. She makes a very compelling case that you don't even need to mention God or religion at all in a literary work for it to be 'Christian', and rather The Lord of the Rings is a Christian work because it forms the character of the reader to become a Christian. Very interesting stuff!
I'll have a listen, as I did to your interesting podcast.
Flannery O'Connor was scathing on the issue of overt moralism and piety in the literary craft:“This means that it ( the literary work) must carry its meaning inside it. It means that any abstractly expressed compassion or piety or morality in a piece of fiction is only a statement added to it.
It means that you can’t make an inadequate dramatic action complete by putting a statement of meaning on the end of it or in the middle of it or at the beginning of it. It means that when you write fiction you are speaking with character and action, not about character and action. The writer’s moral sense must coincide with his dramatic sense.”
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1962 pp. 76-77)
I had a chance to reread your Seen & Unseen piece on Mr. Darcy:Pagan Hero?. It was occasioned by reading "30 Great Myths About Jane Austen", Claudia L. Johnson and Clara Tuite. There the authors take the negative to their "myth" #18: "Jane Austen was a Christian moralist". The authors did affirm Jane was a devout Christian, and cited CS Lewis and Irene Collins. But anchored their argument around their understanding of "moralist". Their argument wasn't convincing to me because they seem to expect Austen, as Christian literary artist, to act as an explicit moral arbiter within the work. I find this to be a very narrow understanding of the literary craft. Austen's nuance and understanding of human nature, as well as her realism, was used by the authors to make their case that somehow Austen couldn't inhabit the "world as it is", without an implicit secularized moral worldview. I thought it was a bit silly, especially their use of Lydia Bennett, seemingly accepted back into the Bennett fold, with only Elizabeth's bemusement that Lydia could continue on as before.
I think the virtue ethics case you've made is far more convincing and dynamic then the cramped "moralist" strawman presented by these authors!
Yes I think the whole argument about a writer not being a 'moralist' unless they have an overtly moralistic tone is deeply flawed. I have my issues with Claudia Johnson's scholarship as you can imagine! This puts me in mind of the podcast episode Radio Maria England recently did with Holly Ordway on her new spiritual biography of Tolkien. She makes a very compelling case that you don't even need to mention God or religion at all in a literary work for it to be 'Christian', and rather The Lord of the Rings is a Christian work because it forms the character of the reader to become a Christian. Very interesting stuff!
I'll have a listen, as I did to your interesting podcast.
Flannery O'Connor was scathing on the issue of overt moralism and piety in the literary craft:“This means that it ( the literary work) must carry its meaning inside it. It means that any abstractly expressed compassion or piety or morality in a piece of fiction is only a statement added to it.
It means that you can’t make an inadequate dramatic action complete by putting a statement of meaning on the end of it or in the middle of it or at the beginning of it. It means that when you write fiction you are speaking with character and action, not about character and action. The writer’s moral sense must coincide with his dramatic sense.”
Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1962 pp. 76-77)