Old Stuff

The First Catholic Novels

Mr. Steven Riddle of Flos Carmeli has written an excellent post about Christian writing, in which he briefly touches on the Catholic novel.

C. S. Lewis recognized the Gospels as the first novels, in a response to critics who wish to portray the Gospels as myths, romances, legends:

I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this [the Gospel of Saint Luke - billw]. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage -- though it may no doubt contain some errors -- pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this simply has not learned to read.

C. S. Lewis, `Fern-Seed and Elephants', in Fern-Seed and Elephants: And Other Essays on Christianity, page 107.