Collected Wk Gk Chesterton V18: (Collected Works of Gk Chesterton) [Paperback]

G. K. Chesterton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1992 | Series: Collected Works of Gk Chesterton

In The Collected Works Of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. XVIII, Chesterton exhibits his perception of character and motive through literary criticism and biography. Chesterton s warm affection for Stevenson and Chaucer is evident in his volumes on them. He was heavily influenced by the manliness, courage, and hope in Stevenson s romances. Polemical literary criticism flourishes in Chesterton s Chaucer, a tribute to medieval England and Chaucer s literature. His monographs on Tolstoy and Carlyle reveal keen insights into two very different writers, thus providing four unique studies that teach the distinctions between normality and abnormality in literature and life. Author: G. K. Chesterton Contents: Robert Louis Stevenson, Chaucer, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Carlyle Format: 450 pages, paperback Publisher: Ignatius Press ISBN: 9780898703740

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ignatius Press (February 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898703743
• ISBN-13: 978-0898703740
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,156,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly about Chaucer and Stevenson., June 30, 2000

By 

David Marshall - See all my reviews

This review is from: Collected Wk Gk Chesterton V18: (Collected Works of Gk Chesterton) (Paperback)

The title is a little deceptive. In fact, this book is mostly about Chaucer and his era, 220 pages worth. Stevenson gets a fair shake at 106 pages. But Carlyle gets only 12 pages, and Tolstoy only four, and those a rather simplistic critique of his philosophy. So only buy the book if you're interested in the former two writers.

As in most of Chesterton's biographies, the story of the subject's life is of minor interest here, compared to a philosophical and artistic description of the subject's works in the context of his time and "modern times." Chesterton is interested in the writer as a thinker, as a creator, and as a moral agent. In defending Stevenson and Chaucer, he argues for his view of Christianity, poetry, love, and artistic humility. If you want his religious views in a purer form, go to the brilliant Orthodoxy or Everlasting Man. If you want a detailed narration of the lives of the writers in question, look elsewhere. And even for this style of biography, I think his book on Dickens was the best I've read. But I found his opinionated description and defense of Chaucer and his times also very interesting. And while he does not scatter brilliant sayings like rose petals at a wedding, as in his best books, (reading Everlasting Man, I wanted to copy every other sentence) a few blossoms do flutter down, like the following, which also explain Chesterton's method:

"The truly impartial historian is not he who is enthusiastic for neither side in a historical struggle. . .The truly impartial historian is he who is enthusiastic for both sides. He holds in his heart a hundred fanaticisms."

"The greatest poets of the world have a certain serenity, because they have not bothered to invent a small philosophy, but have rather inherited a large philosophy. It is, nine times out of ten, a philosophy which very great men share with very ordinary men. It is therefore not a theory which attracts attention as a theory."

Author, Jesus and the Religions of Man (July 2000)

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