Postmodern or post-Catholic? : a study of British Catholic writers and their fictions in a postmodern and postconciliar world

Abstract

This thesis is an investigation into the nature of the 'postmodern' narrative strategies and fictional methods in the work of two British Catholic writers. The work of David Lodge and Muriel Spark is here taken as an example ofthe 'Catholic novel'. In order to determine ifthe overlap ofpostmodern. and Christian-influenced narrative strategies constitutes more than a convergence or coincidence of formal concerns, narrative form in these novels is analyzed in the light of neo-Tho mist and Tho mist aesthetics, a traditional Catholic Christian theory of the arts. The 'postmodern' in these 'Christian' texts becomes largely a coincidence of terminology. Narrative forms which can be classified as 'postmodern' can also be categorized using the terminology of Thomas Aquinas. The apparent similarities betray radically divergent metaphysical presuppositions, however. The nature of the Catholic 'difference' lies in the way postmodern forms are used to challenge the metaphysical bases of those forms.