Visual Theologies in Graham Greene’s ‘Dark and Magical Heart of Faith’ by Dorcas Wangui MA (Lancaster) BA (Lancaster) Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2017 Wangui 1 Abstract Visual Theologies in Graham Greene’s ‘Dark and Magical Heart of Faith’ This study explores the ways in which Catholic images, statues, and icons haunt the fictional, spiritual wasteland of Greene’s writing, nicknamed ‘Greeneland’. It is also prompted by a real space, discovered by Greene during his 1938 trip to Mexico, which was subsequently fictionalised in The Power and the Glory (1940), and which he described as ‘a short cut to the dark and magical heart of faith’. This is a space in which modern notions of disenchantment meets a primal need for magic – or the miraculous – and where the presentation of concepts like ‘salvation’ are defamiliarised as savage processes that test humanity. This brutal nature of faith is reflected in the pagan aesthetics of Greeneland which focus on the macabre and heretical images of Christianity and how for Greene, these images magically transform the darkness of doubt into desperate redemption. As an amateur spy, playwright and screen writer Greene’s visual imagination was a strength to his work and this study will focus on how the visuality of Greene’s faith remains in dialogue with debates concerning the ‘liquidation of religion’ in society, as presented by Graham Ward. The thesis places Greene’s work in dialogue with other Catholic novelists and filmmakers, particularly in relation to their own visual-religious aesthetics, such as Martin Scorsese and David Lodge. Key figures in Greene studies – including Leopoldo Duran and Michael Brennan– have explored his complex spiritual journey. However, this thesis will argue that his visual imagination needs considerable reappraisal, particularly in relation to contemporary theological debates regarding idolatry, iconicity and re-enchantment. It will also connect these debates with the works of figures like Jenny Franchot and Grace Davie, who are interested in the cultural importance of religion in contemporary society. Wangui 2 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the many people who greatly helped me in completing this thesis. Most of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Andrew Tate for his guidance, support, and patience. Your criticism was vital in motivating and shaping this study. Thanks also go to my examiners for kindly giving of their time to study this thesis, which is very much appreciated. I greatly benefited from conversations of feedback with Jo Carruthers, Michael Greaney, Catherine Spooner and John Schad in the Department of English Literature, to whom I am very grateful. I would also like to thank visiting scholar Richard Greene, for his generous interest in my Greeneian musings and his insightful suggestions for my Third Chapter. I am grateful for the funding and financial support from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, which enabled me to embark on this project. Finally, I would like to give special thanks to my friends and family for their encouragement and support throughout my studies. Wangui 3 Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis is of my own composition and that it contains no material previously submitted for any other degree of qualification. The work in this thesis has been produced by me, except where due acknowledgement is made in the text. I confirm that this thesis does not exceed the prescribed limit of 80,000 words, including the main text and any footnotes but excluding the bibliography. Dorcas Wangui Wangui 4 Contents Page Abstract 1 Acknowledgments 2 Declaration 3 Introduction: Greene’s unheimlich belief 5 Chapter One: The Catholic Novel and Visuality 27 Chapter Two: Icon:Idol 73 Chapter Three: Manufacturing Miracles 118 Chapter Four: Greene Screen 157 Conclusion: Priestly Legacies 202 Bibliography 226 Wangui 5 I n t r o d u c t i o n : G r e e n e ’ s u n h e i m l i c h b e l i e f This study explores the playful space between sacred and profane; the space which searches outside of religious genres in order to push the margins of orthodox Christianity and redefine concepts like holiness and deity. Many modern representations of religion in our post-Christian era can be categorised as holy pastiche, the portraits of the divine which the internet has mischievously resurrected from the catacombs of Christian history. Take for example the traditional festival of Easter or what has been renamed as a digital ‘Zombie Jesus Day’, the day when Jesus returned from the dead with the red-leather jacket style of a ghoul from the eighties. The internet declares him to be the only zombie who will let you eat his flesh and who died for your sins only to come back for your brains. This digital trend alleges that along with Lazarus, Jesus was the original zombie; he is named after the vogue of television shows like The Walking Dead (2010-2017), which revel in the possibility of a supernaturally dystopian future. The holy pastiche of both pictures could be turned into the most disconcerting Easter cards ever invented, in their efforts to parody the festivals and sacraments of the Christian faith. Zombie Jesus plants the idea of a Christ who awakened from the tomb with paranormal behaviour that would later be followed by the bizarre rituals of his faithful followers during their acts of communion. The popularity of Zombie Jesus extends into merchandise, clothing and jewellery. There is even a following for Zombie Virgin Mary. This craze is perhaps the most current example of holy pastiche we have, which derives its aesthetic inspiration from Catholicism. Wangui 6 It highlights how the art of the Catholic Church is being transformed into an alternative aesthetic which openly secularized communities are engaging with. The organisation found at www.zombiejesus.org describe themselves as a group who see the rise of the undead as a great time to celebrate spring, visit family and eat chocolate. What would Zombie Jesus do? He would celebrate also.1 The creators of this quasi-festival are not taking advantage of the Christian calendar to cause offense or blasphemy, but to re-establish the need of family and friends in traditions that are now globalized into mass spectacles. Zombie Jesus brings Easter back to its word-of- mouth origins, while highlighting the strange and cultish roots of Christianity. Like Zombie Jesus this study is interested in the darker representations of the Christian faith. It originated from a fascination with the doubleness of religion; the edge of faith that is caught between dualisms of heimlich and unheimlich; like the familiar love of God and the unrecognisable wrath of his judgement. This study is rooted in the liminal space between the sacred and secular. It is the space that modernity is built upon which I believe offers a contemporary religion that blurs the lines between good and evil. I first found this when I was researching religious references in contemporary literature after I began to wonder if the doubleness of heimlich and unheimlich could articulate the fundamental symmetry of faith (vice /virtue for example) and if the word uncanny could be used to describe how religion in the modern world has become a doppelgänger of itself because it is both traditional and yet unknowable. Uncanny in its secular appearance on currency (which gives evidence to the way it bubbles underneath the weight of cultural repression), and uncanny in how religion re-enacts what a Freudian scholar might name the ‘return of the repressed’ in secularised society. To think of the uncanny as a religious space is to think about Christ as the Wangui 7 greatest religious allegory of the critical axiom that the unheimlich is ‘everything which ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light’.2 It is also to think of the heimlich doubling in Christ which is both tame and gothic; a Christ born in a manger and yet also immortalized in his dark crucifixion. The symbolism of the crucifixion is yet another religious space which is uncanny, depicting the gruesome brutality of a Roman death – a criminal’s death which linguistically epitomised curse and taboo – miraculously brought into the light of salvation, liberation and triumph.3 This is a dualism between the familiar symbol of the cross and the unsettling brutality of a Roman crucifixion. The Bible itself is also caught in its own duality after becoming the most widely distributed and best selling book –heimlich in this respect –which is culturally absorbed into western language as the epitome of civilizing aphorisms and yet it is also banned in certain countries and in particular times through government censorship and at its root is filled with unreadable holiness and extreme violence - unheimlich in its gruesome mystery. Noah’s ark is not the only time that the Bible speaks through dualism as the doubleness of the text is also inherent in its form –the collection of books is split into two parts. This is one way of reading the Bible: one side devoted to the free gift of universal mercy and grace for everyone, while the other is founded by an elite nation who has to secure their salvation through sacrifice and strict separation from others. Two covenants which parallel two key figures Adam and Christ; and which illustrates the theology of how the two covenants operate in reversing motions. There is a nice symmetry in this: Death initially came by a man, and resurrection from death came by a man. Everybody dies in Adam; everybody comes alive in Christ.[...] We follow this sequence in Scripture: The First Adam received life, the Last Adam is Wangui 8 a life-giving Spirit.