The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones

Author - Adam Schwartz ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Hardcover Book item from Catholic University of America Press was reviewed on 26-Oct-2008.

Search ISBN:0813213878 offer from Abebooks or used books from Alibris. The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones Reference Book. Classifications : Religious Leaders & Notable People Biographies & Memoirs Subjects Books 20th Century England Europe History Subjects Books General England Europe History Subjects Books General AAS England Europe Hist . Click the following link to view the cover of The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones.

Related topics: Religious. Subjects. Books. 20th Century. England. Europe. History. Subjects. Books. General.

1) Hardcover Book The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones by Catholic University of America Press. Having just heard Adam Schwartz at the 25th Annual Chesterton Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota, I couldn´t wait to get hold of this book. Anyone who is waiting to get it is likely holding off because of the daunting price tag. Absolutely tempted to wait for the paperback, I nevertheless hold that this book is long-needed and occupies a unique niche and that readers interested in these topics will find it well worth the coin.

This is an academic book and probably could be used as a textbook (it´s priced like one). That means it´s scrupulously researched with long bibliographies and copious footnotes, as against the popular biography meant for casual reading. We need both kinds, but let me illustrate what I think is the difference. A popular biography tries to interest casual readers in the topic, saying something like, "Tolkien is the author of the century." An academic biography tries to justify its existence saying something like, "Amid the flood of Tolkien scholarship, this book satisfies a unique and long-felt need." Absolutely the opposite approach.

For that reason I suggest skipping the introduction to this book (or reading it later), which is entirely concerned with justifying its existence and placing it in a niche of literary biography. But start with the Chesterton chapter (chapter one) and the tone instantly changes from pedantic to winsome as Adam Schwartz winningly holds forth. His thesis that Chesterton´s writing was shaped by an early aesthetic and spiritual crisis in art school is not a unique one, it´s also handled in the light, brief overview by Peters, The Christian Imagination, but this is probably the first time it´s been defended as a thesis.

Chesterton is the best known of the four authors considered in the book, the others being writer Graham Greene (who everyone has heard of but no one has read), historian Christopher Dawson and poet David Jones. Schwartz contends that they can all be considered together as British converts to Roman Catholicism in what he calls the Third Spring, the Second Spring being the earlier conversion of Newman, which may be said to mark the beginning of a British literary revival.

Needless to say this period and these authors are nearly unknown to most readers. Since this volume has as much reading as four short biographies, it can be considered four books averaging out at about $15 each. The value of this volume for libraries or research is a given, but I would also suggest that readers interested in literary biography or history will enjoy this engrossing and engaging read and discovering Adam Schwartz.¤

2) Hardcover Book The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones by Catholic University of America Press. This is an amazing work. Somehow, Adam Schwartz, the author, has contrived to write interesting narratives about the details of the spiritual journeys of four English Roman Catholic converts. First, the amount of careful research is stunning. Second, Schwartz´s ability to conflate myriad personal details, plus supporting examples in their ouevres, into a believable trajectory of conversion is nothing short of miraculous.

Lessons for today abound, but what is most impressive is the utter seriousness with which the four converts--Chesterton, Greene, Dawson and Jones--took their time on earth. Seemingly not a wasted minute for any of them.

These men were not grim, by any means, just serious. A real antidote for the near total lack of seriousness of today. Who, for example. would read, and then critique, the Summa Theologica, St. John of the Cross, etc.?

This book is worth every penny.¤

3) Hardcover Book The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones by Catholic University of America Press. For most of modern history, Roman Catholics in Britain were a "rejected minority," facing hostility and estrangement from a culture increasingly at odds with traditional Christianity. Yet British Catholicism underwent a remarkable intellectual and literary renewal, especially in the twentieth century, drawing a disproportionate number of the age´s leading minds into its ranks. The Third Spring unravels this paradox of a renascent Catholic culture within a post-Christian society. It does so through detailed profiles of the spiritual journeys and religious and cultural beliefs of four seminal members of that twentieth-century revival: G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones. Although these four authors came from different backgrounds and wrote primarily in different genres, each converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult and made his new faith the foundation of his intellectual and artistic work. All of them judged the Church to be the last corporate voice of orthodox Christianity in a hitherto unmatched irreligious climate of opinion; and they concluded that the Roman Catholic vision of human nature, thought, history, and art was truer and richer than proposed by prevailing secularism. They thus built on the nineteenth-century "Second Spring" of British Catholicism proclaimed by John Henry Newman to create a fresh assertion of Roman Catholicism, one suited to an era of unprecedented unbelief: a Third Spring. This book is the first detailed examination of these four authors as part of a Roman Catholic, counter-modern community of discourse. It is informed by extensive research in the writers´ works, scholarship on them, and their personal papers. This study is also distinguished by its careful attention to the authors´ cultural and religious contexts, and to the psychology and theology of conversion. It will therefore deepen understanding, and correct some misconceptions, of each man´s spiritual development and his thought, while revealing the twentieth-century Catholic literary revival to be a distinct movement in both British and Roman Catholic thought.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 23-Nov-2008, 08132138789780813213873, 780-090-160-780-821-081-8

The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and David Jones, Book, Image © Catholic University of America Press

Search: Catholic University of America Press, Book Posters, Book Art