Abstract
Sandra Percy, Literature, Literary Theory and Literary Criticism: A History from a Christian Perspective, Mosaic Press: Ontario, 2013; 308 pp.: 9781743241103, £26.99 (pbk)
This book achieves its aim; providing a history of literature, literary theory and literary criticism from a Christian perspective. Its chronological structure allows the reader to dip into relevant sections. After distinguishing between literature, literary theory and literary criticism in Chapter 1, Percy addresses in separate chapters the classical age, medieval period, Renaissance and Reformation, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries respectively, and twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The last three chapters are much the longest; indicating Percy's focus of knowledge and interest. Each chapter contains a general historical survey followed by a summary of literary developments and a section focused on important people or themes. The focused sections are the strongest element of the book. They contain brief biographies of figures in literary history, summaries of their work and its significance, and substantial quotations from key texts.
Underlying this survey is a call to a distinctive Christian literary criticism. Percy follows Carl P. E. Springer in responding to modernism and postmodernism's narrow scientific methods and principles of meaninglessness (pp. 288–93). She defines Christianity as a religion of the Word and Christian literary theory as a belief that creativity comes from the creator God (p. 298). These premises might have been profitably outlined in the introduction, to provide a context for the Christian perspective that is evident throughout. Occasional historical judgements from this perspective give the impression of a monolithic Christian world-view that the author assumes is shared by the reader. For these views to be assessed, they require further explanation. For example, the claim that in the twentieth century ‘[i]n the Middle East, the Western nations led by the United States of America, joined forces against Islam to curb the dangers of a Muslim victory over Democracy and Christianity, as well as to maintain nationalistic supremacy’ (p. 294) enters controversial territory and requires justification. Similarly, it is unclear by what criteria some authors are classified as Christian while others are not, or how distinctions are made between those who gave ‘lip service’ and ‘genuine Christian writers’ (pp. 165–6).
Percy defends an historical approach against the a-historicism of modern literary criticism (pp. 10 and 298). This key argument misses an opportunity to discuss the importance of history to Christian faith because of the Incarnation. The general historical sections explain complex phenomena clearly, but simplification can occasionally veer towards distortion. For example, the claim that ‘there was no New Testament for people to use until the fifteenth century’ (p. 48) presumably refers to the late fourteenth-century Wycliffite English translations, but is potentially misleading. The occasional factual error (such as the date of Queen Elizabeth I's accession (p. 1) written correctly later (p. 96)), suggests a need for closer proof reading and means these sections should be approached with care. There is also occasional repetition. The same section from Keats's ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ is quoted twice on page 195. Despite these caveats, this book provides a clear survey of developments in literature from a Christian perspective, and may be of interest to those with a general interest in the history of Christian literature.