Victorian Religious Discourse pp 175-187 | Cite as
Faith, Romance, and Imagination: Newman the Storyteller
Abstract
John Henry Newman found in stories instruments of such power that they turn even a “black day” of mayhem, theft and death into a thing “blessed.” Stories exercise the imagination; and thus they differ from mere illustration, or instruction, which seek to banish rather than reveal mystery. Newman’s understanding of the place of story in the spiritual life—“real” life— challenges us to confront the narrow, blunting, scorched-earth lovelessness that has until even this day passed for the work of the imagination in our culture. As we consider “black days” of violence, it is worth considering that even the September 11 terrorists have been discussed in print as men whose imaginations were marinated in gory American disaster movies.1
Keywords
German Scholar Dead Letter Covenant Marriage Demonic Possession Passionate CommitmentPreview
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Notes
- 3.John Henry Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, ed. Philip Hughes (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image Books, l956), 162.Google Scholar
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- 22.See Annie Dillard’s witty account of this liberty in her essay “Living Like Weasels,” in Teaching a Stone to Talk (New York: Harpercollins, 1982).Google Scholar
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- 24.John Henry Newman, “Poetry, with Reference to Aristotle’s Poetics,” in Essays and Sketches, vol. I (New York: Longmans Green & Co, 1948), 76.Google Scholar