ENG 346: 19th-Century Literature: Victorian

In The Personalism of John Henry Newman, Crosby shows the reader how Newman finds the life-giving religious knowledge that he seeks. He explores the "heart" in Newman and explains what Newman was saying when he chose as his cardinal's motto, cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). He explains what Newman means in saying that religious truth is transmitted not by argument but by "personal influence."

The Antagonist Principle is a critical examination of the works and sometimes controversial public career of John Henry Newman, first as an Anglican and then as Victorian England's most famous convert to Roman Catholicism at a time when such a conversion was not only a minority choice but in some quarters a deeply offensive one. Lawrence Poston adopts the idea of personality as his theme.

Jane Rupert delves into Newman's perception of the magisterial function of the imagination in both poetry and our knowledge of God, contributing unique insight into the study of his thought and showing how well it serves us to study this important nineteenth-century Catholic thinker. She presents a deep reflection of Newman's thought on several fronts, including intellectual history, theories of knowing, the controversy between science and religion, the defense of the liberal arts, and the aims of Catholic education.

This book is the first sustained attempt to consider what Newman's reaction to Vatican II would have been. The leading Newman scholar, Ian Ker, argues that Newman would have greatly welcomed the reforms of the Council, but would have seen them in the light of his theory of doctrinal development, insisting that they must certainly be understood as changes but changes in continuity rather than discontinuity with the Church's tradition and past teachings.

This full-length life of John Henry Newman is the first comprehensive biography of both the man and the thinker and writer. It draws extensively on material from Newman's letters and papers. Newman's character is revealed in its complexity and contrasts: the legendary sadness and sensitivity are placed in their proper perspective by being set against his no less striking qualities of exuberance, humour, and toughness. This book attempts to do justice to the fullness of Newman's achievement and genius.

Frank Turner portrays Newman as a disruptive and confused schismatic conducting a radical religious experiment. This study demonstrates that Newman's passage to Rome largely resulted from family quarrels, thwarted university ambitions, the inability to control his followers, and his desire to live in a community of celibate males.