Theory and Theology: Graham Greene’s Remapping of Common Ground

Attention in this chapter is focused on Greene’s texts themselves, as distinct from their relationships or conflicts with any particular version of religion. If in Brighton Rock, Pinkie and Rose’s characters should be framed within the terms of the text, any critique of The Heart of the Matter should not be limited to Greene’s capacity to trouble a Catholic notion of pity. In The Power and the Glory, at the level of Juan’s story and the lieutenant’s atheism, Greene assumes particular imaginative contexts, which, in The End of the Affair, intersect with those that are figurative, whereby Sarah’s Catholicism undermines multiple critical premises. In The Honorary Consul, through León’s conflicted marriage with Marta, Greene questions the worth of imposing on his text any single notion of the Catholic. Concomitantly, Monsignor Quixote is less a text implicated in different notions of the Catholic, than an interrogation of what a Catholic novel is.