This dissertation has been 65—1194 microfilmed exactly as received KANTJtA, Robert Andrew, 1928- SATIRE ON THE SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGION. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1964 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan SATIRE ON THE SOCIALIZATION OF RELIGION DISSERTATION Presented In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University Robert Andrew Eantra, B. S., M. A, The Ohio State University 1964 Approved by Adviser Department of English PREFACE This dissertation is first of all a literary and not a sociological or religious study. It does not avoid discrimination on Christian or other grounds, but it does purport to be a study of a literary kind and not another tract for the tines. My first concern is with a large body of satire in relation to the nen who produce it. Tet, the first two chapters are concerned not with the quality of the men behind the satire but with a quality of the world which they and others see, namely, religion's loss of historical and institutional identity in mo d e m society; those chapters delineate the large but particular subject of the satire, by illustration and reference rather than by analysis. Then, the following two chapters are particularly concerned with the uses which the satirists are able to make of that subject— the socialization of religion— and especially consider what the satire itself is. My intention throughout is to examine from a literary viewpoint whatever relationships obtain between satire and religion, while trying to avoid wherever possible impertinent or presumptuous sojourns into the hard-worked fields of theology on the one side and social sciences on the other. ii ill In approaching the subject of satire on the socialization of religion, I tiy to avoid the problem of identifying the reasons for such socialization, on the grounds that neither my immediate interest nor my academic training allows me to do otherwise. But I do txy to understand as clearly as possible what the socialization of religion is, how that socialization is interpreted in sociology and satire. As I see it, my most immediate problem is that of literary genre: to determine how and where exactly such satire is different from politico-religious treatise on the one side and Inspirational Books on the other. There is a second problem which I think can be neither avoided nor easily solved, and which in addition to the problem of genre, has determined the categories and basic scheme of this dissertation. I have had to inquire into the reasons why satirists who evidently have different social and religious convictions do agree that the socialization of religion is a subject for satire, is somehow a moral wrong, and therefore think of themselves as having intellectual and moral sanctions for debunking. I have tried to choose my theoretical way carefully, to keep from falling pell-mell into absurdity, and "to save the religious approach," as Morton W. Bloomfield has said, "without eliminating literature in the process." Though the charges of "dogmatic orthodoxy" and of "blasphemy" have been hurled frequently and indiscriminately at the satirists iv I am concerned with (sometimes at the same satirist), I believe that their religious opinions are at least interesting even where they obviously have not been compelling or perfectly clear. And, though theology and the social sciences cannot be made to do the duty of literary theory, I do not see how they can be relegated to an "extrinsic" study either. Part One then, sociological and historical, defines the subject of the satire as a real, modern phenomenon, and examines what it is as a fact taken up importantly in different literary forms: devotional, controversial, and satiric. It does not establish or recount reasons for the socialization of religion. Pointing to certain similarities between "ancient" abuses in religion and the particular "modern" fact of socialization, as subjects for satire, it does try to establish a connection between literature and life. Pointing to the difference between sociology, history and satire, it begins to define the satire and consider its value as specifically literary knowledge. My major references are to subjects called vice and folly, not only by satirists but by social scientists and historians as well. Part Two differentiates the satirists according to biographical facts, at the same time pointing to what they have in common as satirists. Thus, with the Idea in mind of seeing what is the intrinsically literary quality of the satire (despite its bulk and variety of forms), I would hope V to reveal how and to what extent the satire has been shaped by what it satirizes as well as by the satirists themselves. The concluding chapter in Part Three summarizes the first four chapters and makes the central assertion about them. The dissertation as literary theory points to the relationship between artists, their art, and their society; and, in passing, it censures the theoretical folly of considering them independently, that is, of maintaining the categories of literature as autobiographic statement or literary form or social product. I would hope that the dissertation clarifies the definition of a complex word which signifies both a kind of literature and a spirit which finds expression in various literary genres. For whatever literary awareness I may be credited with, I wish to acknowledge a special indebtedness to my doctoral adviser, Robert C. Elliott, and two other of my teachers at Ohio State University. CONTENTS Chapter PREFACE Part One The Subject of Religious Satire I. PIOUS CRIME: THE INEVITABLE CLASH OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUES n. CORRUPTIO OPTMI PESSIMA: HERESY IN SATIRE AND HISTORY Part Two The Intention of Religious Satirists m. THE CHURCHMEN: ORTHODOXY AS A VESTED INTEREST IV. LITERARY MALEFACTORS: APOSTASY AND SCHISM AS A MEANS OF REFORM Part Three Conclusion RELIGIOUS SATIRE AS A LITERARY GENRE: THEORY AND PRACTICE BIBLIOGRAPHY PART ONE THE SUBJECT OF RELIGIOUS SATIRE CHAPTER ONE PIOUS CRIME: THE INEVITABLE CLASH OF SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS VALUES We recalled our priest (it goes without saying that we were not taught the "law" of ancient religion but the law of the United State). "And what if he had been a living one? Like the ancient ones, eh?” . The ancients . preferred to believe that they saw heaven, even though it was a toy made of clay, rather than confess to theaselves that it was only a blue nothing. We, on the other hand (glory to the Well-Doer!), we are adults, and we have no need of toys. — Eugene Zaniatin's WE It is probably safe to say that society at large and in all ages has provoked satire. Satire is written about society for society; the follies of Mankind are the large-scale authorization for satire; a vast amount of it is not personal or personally allusive, but rather social or total in its implications. And religion in society, or sore exactly, the abuse of religion, has always been attacked. However, religion's losing its institutional identity in society, that is, the specific abuse of religion becoming increasingly 1 social is another matter. The socialization of religion is a phenomenon not ancient but modern, a particular subject for satire in modern times. The perennial dilemma of maintaining and spanning a distance between Church and State has produced both anguish and comedy. Straddling often does. But the socialization of religion is something different from this dilemma. Nor is it identifiable in mo d e m times precisely with the socio-religious forms customarily adapted by or credited to totalitarian states; it is more widespread than that. The conflict of religious and social values goes back to pre-Christian eras. Antigone, in transgressing the laws of Creon's society, committed an act at once holy and criminal. In obeying the "immortal unrecorded laws of God" she committed a crime of piety. CREON: . you dared defy the law. ANTIGONE: I dared. It was not God's proclamation. That final Justice That rules the world below makes no such laws. Tour edict, King, was strong, But all your strength is weakness itself against The immortal unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now: they were, and shall, be, Operative for ever, beyond man utterly. Creon for his part, in spite of admonitions from Antigone, Halmon, the Chorus, and Teiresias, learned too late that "The laws of the gods are mighty, and a man must serve them/ To the last day of his life."1 Such conflict, if regarded 1 Citations from "Antigone," trans. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, The Oedinus Cycle (New York: Harvest, 1956). as inevitable and revealing of nan's Inperfection, necessarily and always has aroused pity and fear— or laughter. But to the extent that such conflict has become impossible or unlikely, it has provoked laughter of a particular kind. M o d e m satire on the socialization of religion provokes laughter as the likelihood of such conflict wanes. The conflict though insidiously complex is yet fundamental. A Chancellor who became Archbishop in the England of Henry U , Saint Thomas Becket defended the supranational authority of the Church against the proposed canonical innovations of the King, for example, the unreserved obedience of the bishops to the English throne. Whatever the estimate of the cause for which Thomas died, that he was a martyr is indisputable. His cause was an old one, and, for members of the Church, his murder in the cathedral is a reiteration of "an eternal action, an eternal patience/ To which all must consent that it may be willed/ And which all must suffer that they may will it."2 Saint Thomas is caught at one point in history in the inevitable d a s h of social and religious values.