Date of Award
Summer 8-4-2022
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Dr. Jeremy Glick
Second Advisor
Dr. Marlene Hennessy
Academic Program Adviser
Dr. Janet Neary
Abstract
An evaluation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock as it apprehends the Catholic novel as form. With ample assistance from Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, Robert Hugh Benson's The Lord of the World, and select works of Fredric Jameson—most notably The Political Unconscious—this analysis seeks to clarify the politico-spiritual "horizon" evident in Greene's first "Catholic novel." By reviewing the novel through the lens of both Catholic theology and modern historical dialectic material criticism, this evaluation reclaims Graham Greene's early political radicalism that critics identify better in his later, less-religious texts. Discovered most clearly in the ending of Brighton Rock, this paper reshapes the text's conclusion from a solution offered to society via narrative to a location. Once this spatial aspect of the novel's ending has been established, one can recognize the potential within lived Catholic experience to synthesize with a concordant working-class consciousness.
Recommended Citation
McGuire, James C., "The Worst Horror of All: Greene’s Political and Salvific Imagination in Brighton Rock" (2022). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/hc_sas_etds/924