The Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture

Eight Novelists write about their Craft and their Context

Edited by Paul S. Fiddes

pp ix161 June 2000
paperback 0-7083-1599-2
hardback 0-7083-1598-4

‘ . . . this collection admirably forces the exploration of a number of significant questions about the relationship between contemporary faith and the modern novel.’ (Regent’s Reviews)

‘ . . . an outstanding volume of essays. . . an adroit and instructive book, it remains important reading for anyone wanting to understand the endlessly fascinating field of literature and theology.’ (Southern Humanities Review)

‘ . . . thoughtful assessments of the contemporary novel’s link to religion and spirituality.’ (Journal of Contemporary Religion)

‘The Editor provides a superb Introduction to the issues explored in this very recommendable book.’ (Expository Times)

‘As first-hand accounts from jobbing authors, the essays offer a rare commentary on how spirituality (or for that matter religion or theology) informs or is to be located in a given art form . . . In providing an introductory essay that brings these voices into debate, Fiddes goes a long way towards orientating the reader to the themes that turn this collection in to a single book.’ (Reviews in Religion and Theology)

If, as Donna Tartt writes, ‘the novel in its history and genesis is an emphatically secular art form: the product of a secular society, addressing primarily secular concerns’, how can there be any relationship between spirituality and narrative fiction? Are there any specific factors in the form of the novel and in modern culture generally which might make the novel an unsuitable medium for the exploration of religious experience and spiritual values, or can the novel take the reader on a journey of spiritual discovery?

In this book, practitioners of the art of novel-writing – Donna Tartt, Jill Paton Walsh, David McLaurin, Sara Maitland, Catherine Fox, Susan Howatch, T. Davis Bunn and William Horwood – consider the relationship between the novel and spirituality in our society, while an introductory essay by the editor, Paul S. Fiddes, discusses the main issues to emerge from the collection.

Originally given as public lectures between 1997 and 1999, the essays collected in The Novel, Spirituality and Modern Culture provide exciting and thought-provoking reflections upon creativity, freedom and human destiny within the context of (post) modern culture, as well as being first hand testimony to the experience of creative writing.

Contents and contributors: * Paul S. Fiddes, Introduction: the novel and the spiritual journey today; * Donna Tartt, The spirit and writing in a secular world; * Jill Paton Walsh, The blizzard of circumstance: writing and moral discovery; * David McLaurin, The dark night of the novel in an age of weak faith; * Sara Maitland, Religious experience and the novel: a problem of genre and culture; * Catherine Fox, ‘Telling the old, old story’: God and the novelist as creators; * Susan Howatch, A question of integrity: stories and the meaning of wholeness; * T. Davis Bunn, ‘Christian fiction’ in American society: a defence of a despised genre; * William Horwood, The novel and the safe journey of healing.