Reassessing the Chesterbelloc
By Jon Elsby
()
About this ebook
Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton were two of the biggest names on the Georgian literary scene. They were what today would be called 'public intellectuals'. Each wrote nearly a hundred books in a variety of genres and on a huge range of subjects. But they are now almost entirely unread. The author argues that it is time to reassess their achievement. He maintains that, while their work is uneven and some of it is frankly ephemeral, their best work deserves to be rediscovered and read without bias. They will then be seen as writers who offered a robust critique of modernity, and thereby have provided us with resources with which to question and challenge the facile ideas, ingrained prejudices, and lazy assumptions of the ambient culture.
Jon Elsby
Jon Elsby’s spiritual and intellectual journey has been from Protestantism to atheism, and finally to Catholicism. He writes extensively on Catholic literature and Catholic literary figures.
Read more from Jon Elsby
Heroes and Lovers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSeeing is Believing Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Reassessing the Chesterbelloc
Related ebooks
The Consolation of Philosophy (3 Classic Translations by James, Cooper and Sedgefield) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReligious and Poetic Experience in the Thought of Michael Oakeshott Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEric Voegelin's Late Meditations and Essays: Critical Commentary Companions Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Defence of Modernity: Vision and Philosophy in Michael Oakeshott Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMilton and Catholicism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocrates Meets Machiavelli: The Father of Philosophy Cross-examines the Author of The Prince Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Essays on Modernity: And the Permanent Things from Tradition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Counter-Currents Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCalm in Chaos: Catholic Wisdom for Anxious Times Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Liberty and Its Enemies: Essays of Kenneth Minogue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhat's Wrong with the World Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocrates Meets Hume: The Father of Philosophy Meets the Father of Modern Skepticism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Arts of Rule: Essays in Honor of Harvey C. Mansfield Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEliot and His Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in the Twentieth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe True Europe: Its Identity and Mission Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Order of Things Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilbert Keith Chesterton Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFr. Leonardo Castellani: an introduction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All Things Considered (A Selection Of Essays): "Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFor Love of Wisdom: Essays on the Nature of Philosophy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhilosophical Theology and the Knowledge of Persons Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Democratic Theory of Michael Oakeshott: Discourse, Contingency, and 'The Politics of Conversation' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTheology of the Church Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5At a Breezy Time of Day: Selected Schall Interviews on Just about Everything Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOn the Principles of Taxing Beer: and Other Brief Philosophical Essays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFreedom and Sin: Evil in a World Created by God Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Work: In Retrospect Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gift to the Church and World: Fifty Years of Joseph Ratzinger’s Introduction to Christianity Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTest Everything: Hold Fast to What Is Good Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Composition & Creative Writing For You
Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zen in the Art of Writing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5THE EMOTIONAL WOUND THESAURUS: A Writer's Guide to Psychological Trauma Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Elements of Style: The Original Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Economical Writing, Third Edition: Thirty-Five Rules for Clear and Persuasive Prose Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell - A Story Grid Masterwork Analysis Guide Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Power of Writing It Down: A Simple Habit to Unlock Your Brain and Reimagine Your Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Writing Series You'll Ever Need - Grant Writing: A Complete Resource for Proposal Writers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing to Learn: How to Write - and Think - Clearly About Any Subject at All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Emotion Thesaurus (Second Edition): A Writer's Guide to Character Expression Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Craft of Research, Fourth Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Writer's Diary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Legal Writing in Plain English: A Text with Exercises Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5People, Places, Things: My Human Landmarks Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shut Up and Write the Book: A Step-by-Step Guide to Crafting Your Novel from Plan to Print Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Writing to Wake the Soul: Opening the Sacred Conversation Within Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Write a Mystery: A Handbook from Mystery Writers of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Creative Journal: The Art of Finding Yourself: 35th Anniversary Edition Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Romancing the Beat: Story Structure for Romance Novels: How to Write Kissing Books, #1 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Plot Whisperer Book of Writing Prompts: Easy Exercises to Get You Writing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Reassessing the Chesterbelloc
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Reassessing the Chesterbelloc - Jon Elsby
Reassessing the Chesterbelloc
Jon Elsby
Jon Elsby has asserted his rights under the Copyright and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by CentreHouse Press at Smashwords.
Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton were two of the biggest names on the Georgian literary scene. They were what today would be called ‘public intellectuals’. Each wrote nearly a hundred books in a variety of genres and on a huge range of subjects. But they are now almost entirely unread.
The author argues that it is time to reassess their achievement. He maintains that, while their work is uneven and some of it is frankly ephemeral, their best work deserves to be rediscovered and read without bias. They will then be seen as writers who offered a robust critique of modernity, and thereby have provided us with resources with which to question and challenge the facile ideas, ingrained prejudices, and lazy assumptions of the ambient culture.
Contents
Hilaire Belloc: Reputation and Reappraisal
•All Human Conflicts are Ultimately Theological
•The Faith is Not a Theory or an Abstraction, But a Thing, a Concrete Reality, Which is Embodied in the Catholic Church
•Any Culture is Based on, and Underpinned by, its Religion
•Truth, Beauty and Goodness Form an Indissoluble Logical Trinity of Absolutes Such That an Attack on (or the Abandonment of) One of Them Would Lead Ineluctably to an Attack on (or Abandonment of) the Others
G. K. Chesterton: God’s Jester
•Introduction
•Chesterton’s Apologetics
•What Kind of Thinker Was Chesterton?
•What is Chesterton’s Achievement?
•Notes
About the Author
About CentreHouse Press
Hilaire Belloc: Reputation and Reappraisal
Few writers can have suffered such a drastic reversal of fortune as Hilaire Belloc. In his day, he was regarded as one of the greatest living writers, an exemplary stylist, an important thinker and a public intellectual. Yet, by the time of his death in 1953, he was regarded as passé and now he has almost entirely slipped from view. His hundred or so books are largely unread and out of print and, with a couple of exceptions, seem likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The exceptions, The Path to Rome and the Cautionary Verses he wrote for children and for the few adults with a sufficiently cultivated sense of irony to appreciate them, continue to be read, though not widely.
The reasons usually given for Belloc’s comparative neglect are numerous. First, it is said that the discursive, conversational essay, the form in which he typically expressed his views, has fallen from fashion. Indeed, the fashion today is for extreme brevity, for ‘getting to the point’ with the minimum of delay. Belloc, following the English tradition of Addison, Steele, Johnson, Lamb and Hazlitt, wrote a leisurely prose, which took its time in coming to the point, and used rhetorical devices such as irony, imagery, illustration and repetition to confirm and elaborate his theses. Second, persistent accusations of anti-Semitism have damaged his reputation. (We shall examine later the question whether – and, if so, to what extent – those accusations may be justified.) Third, Belloc’s characteristic brand of uncompromising, pre-conciliar Catholicism, trenchantly expressed, and the panache, pugnacity and provocativeness with which he defended it, are unpopular, even embarrassing, in an age of ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue. Catholics today are more concerned to extend olive branches to other Christians and those of other faiths than with precise definitions of doctrines or the vigorous defence of their own beliefs. Fourth, his temper and cast of mind – classical, sceptical, fastidious, subtle, mercurial, ironic – is uncongenial to the modern age and is not generally understood. An age such as ours, accustomed to crudity of expression and sledgehammer sarcasm, is not likely to appreciate delicacy, a discriminating choice of words, or irony employed as a rapier rather than as a bludgeon.
It is worth pausing a while to consider these reasons. The underlying assumption is that, however highly he was regarded in his own day, Belloc cannot be regarded as, in any sense, a major writer or a serious thinker in ours. I said that his reputation had suffered more than the usual reversal after his death. The extent of this reversal can be seen by comparing the following assessments, some by his contemporaries, others by more recent commentators. Here, first, is W N Roughead, writing in 1950, three years before Belloc’s death:
For he is a born writer if ever there was one.