Cultural ambiguity about the faith: some allergies in the literature

Abstract

It is rare to find a militant atheism in the English literature of any quality; nowadays in the field of narrative of fiction the religion is more absent than satirised or attacked. Nevertheless there are three families of narrative that the Author explores: first, the novels and novelists who seem initially atheist ((I. McEwan, R. Ford); secondly, a whole family of fiction that is openly spiritual without being religious (Y. Mantel, D. Copland); thirdly, some novelists who seek to counter atheism by mean of their writing (F. O’Connor, J. R. Tolkien). This article offers some theological reflections on the evangelization because «a certain openness to the possibility of mystery» remains as a characteristic of the literature.