Catholicity and Englishness--Formation of a New Tradition

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24520287
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Literature in English
• Research Institution: Kobe University
• Principal Investigator: NOTANI Keiji 神戸大学, その他の研究科, 教授 (80164698)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: カソリシティ / G.K.チェスタトン / H.ベロック / T.S.エリオット / 反近代主義

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The research elucidates how Catholicism came to form a basis of Englishness by looking into the works of G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and T.S. Eliot. Since the Reformation and in the process of building and strengthening a nation state, English Catholicism had been presented as heterodoxy, performing a cultural and political role of sanctifying the established culture. This alienation from the main, however, stimulated Catholic intellectuals to turn their minds to the source of real Englishness, which they found in pre-modern times. Dismayed by sheer materialism and the imperialistic expansion of England through cosmopolitan finance, Catholic thinkers idolized Little-Englandism. Anglo-Catholic Eliot also tried to resuscitate catholicity in the Protestant faith of the Established Church. Catholic intellectuals' movement to put forward the anti-modernistic values shows the growth of Catholic element in English culture.

Free Research Field

英文学