The Ache of Modernism: Theological Aesthetics in Greene’s Nonfiction

Greene can be understood according to the “ache of modernism,” which denotes the rejection of “comforting theistic palliatives.” By opposing the religious and the secular it becomes possible to understand how Greene’s novels are interrogative of their own fictional terms at every level, which constitutes his version of a “theological aesthetics.” In his early literary reviews, Greene rejects any painstaking or overbearing analytical approach to literature. Greene’s approaches to Catholic notions of drama are one way of understanding his approaches to his own work because they oppose and present different aspects of the religious and the secular. Greene’s approaches to nineteenth- and twentieth-century modernities offer a further way of formulating these aspects of Greene’s work.