Abstract
The title says what it does on the tin with unusual accuracy. Tomko offers us an extended meditation on Coleridge’s idea of ‘the willing suspension of disbelief’, in its subsequent use, abuse and history as a critical term down to Tolkien – one of the few modern writers to have taken the idea seriously both in his own writing and criticism. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the most influential twentieth-century critics have subscribed to what Ricoeur called ‘the hermeneutics of suspicion’, a stance that involved trying to ‘see behind’ a literary work to detect the author’s motivations (conscious or unconscious) and so reveal a variety of hidden agendas. The trouble with this, as Tomko points out, is that after this it is very difficult to be then caught up in the world of a play or a novel, and the general effect is to make literature deeply unattractive or even uninteresting – a problem that he intelligently spots lurking in Terry Eagleton’s arguments. On the other hand, too willingly to suspend belief in the implied premises of an author can lead to accepting all kind of nonsense. Some kind of middle road is obviously essential.
In this relatively brief work Tomko spells out what Coleridge (probably) intended, distinguishing it from assumptions of French critics who seemed to believe that an audience was fooled into thinking a play was real life, to Samuel Johnson who never let down his guard at all. The most interesting section lies in Tomko’s discussion of what ‘faith’ might mean in this context – and, in particular, how far this is just a metaphor taken from the Christian tradition and re-applied in an aesthetic context, and how far it might be used in its full religious sense. As Tomko rightly points out, human perception, even knowledge, involves a literal, not just a metaphorical act of faith, and physical perception and religious belief are not so much opposites as points on a spectrum whose boundaries are delicate and blurred. Here Tomko (a Catholic) might have made more of Newman’s thinking in the Grammar of Assent.
Indeed, if there is a problem with this book, it is that Tomko has deliberately taken much of his space debating with critics, such as New Historicists, who are least likely to be sympathetic to his nuanced theological approach, rather than using his more robust allies – one thinks not merely of Newman, but of (say) Kierkegaard and Chesterton, as well as his other major exemplum, Tolkien, on whom he writes with great insight. Probably the most daunting thing about this very slim, stimulating and erudite book, part of a series entitled ‘New Directions in Religion and Literature’, is the price. At a nominal £65 it suggests an assumption that it will only be bought by libraries. They are right that it will be more borrowed than bought. The release of the paperback later this year will be warmly welcomed.