Retrieving Christianity

Theorists of literary modernism rarely go beyond token references to Christianity in their attempts at definition. So too in criticism, where the specifics of an artist's encounter with the dominant faith of the culture often dissolve into lazy and shrugging references to "secularization," "the death of God," and "the revolt against traditional religion." A new research project at the University of Bergen, Norway, called Modernism and Christianity: Literature, History, Archive (2011-2014) aims to retrieve Christianity from this subterranean, supposedly fossil existence within Modernism studies. Archival research is essential to this task because it enables us to uncover how a range of Christian influences were part and parcel of the intellectual world and creative process of modernist writers.

 

Modern Liberals, like Victorian maidens averting their eyes from uncloither limbs, look th eother way from the Christianity that's in the very air they breathe.