The Wisdom of John Henry Newman

Abstract

At first glance the essays in this diverse collection on John Henry Newman may appear to have little in common aside from their primary subject. “Voice of Reason” contains an essay that focuses on the influence of Newman on T. S. Eliot (Oser), another that shows Newman to have been influenced by Jane Austen (Lindley), an essay that examines the significance of Newman’s famous motto cor ad cor loquitur in his argumentative writings (Bradshaw), one that seeks to add to our understanding of the function of reason in Newman’s conception of conscience (Aquino), and one that explores Newman’s apprenticeship as a writer of sermons by looking closely at his early sermon work as a clergyman in the Church of England (Poston). But on a second look a common thread will appear: each of these essays takes seriously the idea that Newman is a crucial intellectual in the history of nineteenth-century literature and that we need to continue the process of understanding his complex work. One danger to this understanding of Newman’s significance, aside from the general turn away from challenging, difficult older works, is the recent focus on Newman’s sanctification and potential sainthood, a focus that, while perhaps raising Newman’s profile among Catholics with little or no interest in his intellectual labors, may have had the effect of dampening interest in Newman among younger students of literature. Fortunately, as we shall see, there has been no corresponding decrease in interest among scholars. One of the effects of the dampening of popular interest has been that fewer and fewer readers know anything about him. Such readers would first learn of Newman from anthologies, but a quick look at the representation of Newman in anthologies tells a disheartening story. The first several editions of the Norton Anthology of English Literature contained twenty pages of Newman’s writings, including eleven pages from the Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Newman’s spiritual autobiography. In a 2012 edition of the Norton, the Newman selection has been reduced to eight pages from his Idea of a University, a series of lectures on higher education. In the Norton Major Authors Edition, Newman has disappeared entirely, as he has from the Broadview Anthology’s print versions.