Faith and Fiction: A Theological Critique of the Narrative Strategies of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

There is one point on which all readers of Barbara Pell’s theological
study of Hugh MacLennan and Morley Callaghan are likely to agree: this
book is highly uncharacteristic of the literary criticism of the 1990s.
Whether it is behind or ahead of its time is, however, a question that
will probably be disputed.

Basically, Pell takes the religious beliefs and philosophical ideas of
her chosen authors seriously, and discusses their effect on the kind of
novels that result. She reads MacLennan in the light of Paul Tillich’s
The Courage to Be and Callaghan in the light of Jacques Maritain’s
Integral Humanism. Insofar as this approach insists that the
intellectual matrix out of which works of literature emerge is supremely
important, it is to be welcomed. Pell’s position enables her to
recognize the unifying assumptions that can be traced through
MacLennan’s and Callaghan’s main works. This leads to a number of
useful and solid insights.

I feel bound, however, to register one or two reservations. While her
generalized comments are valuable, the discussions of specific novels
could be puzzling to a reader who is not as saturated in the details of
the texts as she is. In addition, I found her distribution of praise and
blame a little too pat—as if didacticism in fiction were always a
fault, as if the sole concern of religious novels were to provide a
consistent religious vision. Finally, given the Catholic/Protestant
split, I wish she had made a clear statement about her own sectarian
allegiance.

Old-fashioned or avant-garde? I like to see Faith and Fiction as a
pioneering step away from the postmodernist cul-de-sac toward a more
open (and to that extent more traditional) literary-critical approach.
Her commentary is impressively solid without being profoundly exciting.
But it is a gratifying start. I hope others will follow her example and
carry her achievement further.