Modern Christian literature

the long version

The author unfolds for us the well-spring of the Christian spirit that runs through the religiously oriented literature of the last 450 years. This guided literary tour begins with the genius of the sixteenth century--Thomas More, Martin Luther, St. Ignatius, St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross; wends through the magnificence of the seventeetnth century when giants like Milton and Bunyan were writing in England, when Racine and Pascal lived in France and Calderon in Spain. The light of greatness dims for Christian writing in the eighteenth century as if to pause for breath before the grandeur of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Christian masters--Chateaubriand, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Newman, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Soloviev and finally Péguy and Bloy. In short pointed analyses the author picks out the Christian content of each writer in his particular environment.