Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature

Catholic literature is a wide‐ranging term. It will come as no surprise to readers of this encyclopedia that coverage extends from what might be regarded as canonical “Roman Catholic” works, like Teresa of Avila and John Henry Newman, through works like the novels of Evelyn Waugh and the poems of Gerald Manley Hopkins, where Catholicism is a critical point of reference, to works of Dante and Chaucer, Tolkien and Joyce, where Catholic themes can be found along with wider religious issues and secular ones as well. In some cases it might be said that “only a Catholic could have written”...