histroical criticism

A detailed Summary of histroical criticism

Graham Greene's, The Power and the Glory, is a religious novel that shows the collision between religion and politics in a small state in Mexico during the 1930's post revolution ("Facts of 'The Power and the Glory" 'by Wolters and Noordhoff, 1994). This struggle between the Church and the State is as a result of the five articles of the 1917 Constitution. Article 3 called for secular education in the schools; Article 5 outlawed monastic orders; Article 24 forbade public worship outside the confines of churches; and Article 27 placed restrictions on the right of religious organizations to hold property. Article 130, which was most obnoxious to Catholics, deprived clergy members of basic rights and made them in effect second-class citizens. Priests and nuns were denied the right to wear clerical attire, to vote, to criticize government officials or to comment on public affairs in religious periodicals (Constitution of 1917, Art. 130. Law of November 25, 1926, Art. 5). It was this last Article that is the main focus of "The Power and The Glory".

The Power and the Glory explores this corruption and atonement through a down and out Roman Catholic priest

"You'll have a job not to miss the boat."

Graham Greene demonstrates how brave and courageous the whiskey priest is when he is willing to forgive people that turn on him. The best example of this is when the

The hollow man put his hand to his hip- ... (P. 11)

Greene's publishes the work "The Power and the Glory," in 1940, and does not receive much of a reception throughout the UK as the nation was pre-occupied with wartime problems. This, of course, pushed all literature into a second-class category where national priorities were concerned. Into this wartime mix, one must add the fact that the work is a religious novel, in which the Catholic Church suffers enormously in Mexico. With religious groups around the globe, being punished for whatever reasons one shall readily observe the reasons why the work, at first, was not at all widely accepted. Green's works are criticized because of his Catholic content. However, Catholicism as a public system of laws and dogmas is far from being an adequate key to Greene's fiction. There is a good deal of evidence, internal and external, that in Greene's fiction Catholicism is not a body of belief requiring exposition and demanding categorical assent or dissent, but a system of concepts, a source of situations, and a reservoir of symbols with which he can order and dramatize certain intuitions about the nature of human experience - intuitions which were gained prior to and independently of his formal adoption of the Catholic faith. Regarded in this light, Greene's Catholicism may be seen not as a crippling burden on his artistic freedom, but as a positive artistic asset (http://members.tripod.com/~greeneland/critics.htm, Lodge).

Graham Greene portrays to the reader that the whiskey priest thinks of others before himself. This is clearly evident when he goes to help the child's dyeing mother even though he knows that he will miss his boat: But the stranger got up as though unwillingly he had been summoned to an occasion he couldn't pass by. He said sadly,

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Approximate Word count = 2076
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Miscellaneous