Sex in Contemporary Literature - Modern 'Classics' and Condemned Works
by M. Joseph Costelloe, S.J., Ph.D.
(In our preceding issue Father Costelloe discussed the degenerate state of a great deal of contemporary literature and quoted a number of pronouncements of the Holy See with respect to it. In this concluding part of his case Father Costelloe draws some comparisons between books, which have been specifically condemned by the Holy See, and some modern "classics.")
In addition to these admonitions coming from the Holy See in recent decades, it would be well to take into account the anxiety expressed by the heads of various dioceses and archdioceses with respect to the harm being done by immoral literature. In his Lenten Letter of 1946, Cardinal van Roey, the Primate of Belgium, observed:
In every country large sections of the press, literature, theater, and cinema are open or camouflaged propagators of anti-Christian modes of thinking, acting, and living. Current novels, which everyone is anxious to read, too often even those written by well-known Catholics, offer sacrifice to the world. We could cite by name works published in our country by Catholic authors which are frankly to be condemned from this aspect. To their authors we would like to recall the grave words of Christ: "Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh." A literary man's activity is surely a sin of scandal when either by complaisant descriptions or by explicit solicitations or by the justification or repetition of maxims contrary to sound morals his pen inclines his readers, especially the young, to evil.36
The Pastoral Letter for Advent, 1953, of Cardinal Griffin, Archbishop of Westminster, devoted a considerable amount of space to the same problem. Among other things he had the following to say:
In recent years We have been much concerned at certain trends in contemporary literature. Many novels are published today, which show a total disregard of elementary standards of decency. Even if their content be not pornographic within the meaning of the law, they are at best a danger to the morals of their readers and represent an abuse of that freedom of expression which is bestowed by the absence of censorship by the civil authority. It is often alleged in justification that their authors are endeavoring to be realist and to reflect an existent state of affairs. There can be no justification for publishing material which, if not directly immoral, is calculated to prove an occasion of sin to the vast majority of readers. Sins against the sixth commandment may be in thought and in word as well as in deed.It is sadly true that a number of Catholic writers appear to have fallen into this error. Indeed, novels which purport to be the vehicle for Catholic doctrine frequently contain passages which by their unrestrained portrayal of immoral conduct prove a source of temptation to many of their readers. Though it may well be that such literature can be read in safety by the select few, so great is the danger to the virtue of the majority that its general publication is most undesirable. The presentation of the Catholic way of life within the framework of fiction may be an admirable object, but it can never justify as a means to that end the inclusion of indecent and harmful material.
Of late We have frequently been asked by Our people for official guidance in this matter.37
Attraction to "Negative Side of Reality"
Two years after publication of this letter of the English cardinal, the bishops of Germany issued a joint pastoral letter taking up the problems of contemporary Catholic literature in considerable detail. After noting that modern literature in general is "chiefly attracted by the negative side of reality," the bishops admit that it is impossible "to produce a sinless literature about sinful man," but they then go on to express concern about the manner in which these human failings are depicted:
The reader must not be allowed to gain the impression that men are hopelessly and irredeemably victimized by the powers of darkness. Such a false impression may arise through certain ways of depicting sexual life, which is, indeed, as we know, of particular danger. We regret that in this regard the Christian's opportunity to dominate his lower powers in a life of purity, in the sacrament of marriage or in a life of dedicated virginity, rarely finds satisfactory treatment. Instead, certain physical acts which natural shame relegates to an intimate sphere are sometimes depicted in an unsparingly and painfully open manner.
The letter then proceeds to condemn the confusion of moral standards in which "mortal sin is depicted as if that state were a matter of course" and the false glorification of sin as a means to growth in sanctity. Suicide is not to be regarded as "a solution for a seemingly unsuccessful struggle with the moral law." A false picture is frequently given of Catholic priests and the temptations to which they are subject. "The sacrament of marriage is also treated, besides baptism and confession, in modern novels. Here, too, we note a preoccupation with aberrations and lawlessness."38
When we turn to our own country, we must take into account at least two important pronouncements of the American hierarchy. The first of these is the Condemnation of Indecent Literature of November 17, 1932:
One of the most potent factors in this debasing of the individual and the public conscience is the increasing flood of immoral and unmoral books, periodicals, pamphlets, which are widely advertised throughout the country . . . Publishers repeatedly issue new books outdoing the old ones in obscenity. Public opinion has influenced the courts of the nation to such an extent that it is now almost impossible to have the most obscene books debarred from the customs or from the mails.39
In 1957 the American hierarchy again took up the problem with their Statement on Censorship in which they reaffirmed the Church's right to make moral judgments with respect to literature. They further pointed up the advantages accruing to the arts from such guidance:
Although the Church is primarily concerned with morals and not aesthetics, the two are clearly related. Art that is false to morality is not true art. While good taste cannot supply the norm for moral judgment on literature or art, yet it must be admitted that good taste will inevitably narrow the field of what is morally objectionable.40
The Practical Judgment
In the discussion of any complex moral problem, the general principles are, as a rule, easily grasped: it is their practical application that creates the real difficulties. This is notably true in evaluating the intrinsic morality of literary works where an author's intent and a reader's response must receive a certain amount of consideration. All good men are, of course, opposed to "bad books," but too few are in agreement as to just what is a bad book. On this point there is a wide variety of opinion even among literary men themselves. One critic gives almost unqualified praise to Greene while repeatedly accusing O'Hara of writing smut. Another has roundly condemned Winsor, but has extolled Joyce to the skies. A third, D. H. Lawrence, while siring novels which even some of his friends considered pornographic, held that Joyce's Ulysses was an unclean book. When the professionals so disagree, what hope is there for the amateurs? Who is to judge the morality of a work of art? For Catholics I think that there is at hand a fairly simple answer to the problem: the teaching authority of the Church. The Holy See is not content with making general statements about the dangers inherent in bad books and drawing up specific categories of works that may not be read by the faithful without permission, but it frequently comes to immediate grips with the problem and proscribes a book by name. While the immediate effect of such a condemnation is to make the reading and retention of the book illicit, it has the further effect of giving an example of what the Church considers to be evil literature.41 The decrees of the Holy Office in this regard are certainly useful in determining the mind of the legislator on the proper interpretation of the law. It should therefore not be out of place to make a comparison of five much-discussed novels with five others that have at one time or other fallen under ecclesiastical censure and are still proscribed. Though the arrangement is necessarily subjective, I shall discuss each one of these briefly according to what seems to me to be their relative obscenity.
1. Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary
Gustav Flaubert (1821-1880) began writing Madame Bovary early in 1852 and completed the novel in May, 1856. It started to appear serially in the Revue de Paris in October of this same year, and came out in book form the following year. It is now recognized as a landmark in the history of fiction, inaugurating a new movement which aimed at giving a minute and scrupulous portrayal of life. At the time of its publication, however, the novel did not create so much of a sensation as an artistic innovation as it did as a source of scandal. The "realism" of the story brought about the public prosecution of both author and publisher for promoting immorality. The defendants were eventually acquitted, but the experience was a painful one for Flaubert. Five years later he suffered another disheartening rebuff. By a decree dated June 20, 1864, Madame Bovary was put on the Index, where it still remains. The motives for the condemnation may be found in the story itself: Emma Bovary, the "heroine" of the tale, is promiscuous and she finally settles her personal problems by taking arsenic. In a society where divorce was extremely uncommon, the flagrant carryings-on of Emma and her paramours must have been disconcerting. On the other hand, this much can be said for the book: Flaubert certainly does not give the impression that he condones the actions of his leading character; the various adulteries are described with tact and without significant details, at least by modern standards; and there is a good moral to the whole: adultery can be just as banal as married bliss — love without honor can lead only to disillusion and despair. This is a book which would not disturb the average adult of the twentieth century in the United States, and it is one which might well be removed from the Index, when, and if, it is revised.
2. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy
A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) has been described by a professor at Columbia University as "one of the most original and choice books in English literature, though not of the highest quality."42 Sterne was a somewhat eccentric Anglican divine who, like Donne and Swift before him, managed to combine a life of letters with his work in the ministry. A good many of his sermons have been published, but his reputation chiefly depends on Tristam Shandy and A Sentimental Journey. The latter was the fruit of a seven-months' trip on the continent made in the hope of regaining his health. It was published in its unfinished state in 1768, a short time after Sterne's death. On September 6, 1819, it was put on the Index, where it still remains. The motive for the condemnation can hardly have been an attack on the clergy of France and Italy since, with one minor exception, they are treated kindly. The condemnation must have come from the conviction that Sterne's habit of frequently mentioning the unmentionable smelled too strongly of the old Adam, though his humor would hardly be judged so severely today.
3. Jerome David Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
J. D. Salinger (1919- ) has published about three dozen short stories and one novel, The Catcher in the Rye. This little book, which was first published in 1951 has attained the stature of a small American classic. College professors are particularly fond of recommending it to their freshman and sophomore classes. As one teacher has explained this phenomenon, "J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye, a study of an idealistic boy in a confused, pharisaical, impure civilization, expresses a vision which American boys cannot fail to find more profoundly familiar, revealing and deeply moving than they can ever again find that of Tom Sawyer to be." Quite another picture of the book however is the following:
The Catcher in the Rye tells of the madman's week end he has in New York, after walking out on prep school. It's a mad melange of iceskating at Radio City, interviewing a prostitute in his hotel room, escaping from a homosexual, and so on. Not only do some of the events stretch probability, but Holden's character as an iconoclast, a kind of latter-day Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, is made monotonous and phony by the formidably excessive use of amateur swearing and coarse language.43
My personal objection to the book is not so much its use of words of a type which St. Paul declares "should not be so much as named among you" as to its basic immorality. It is one continuous round of drinking, fighting, necking, and, though hero Holden loses heart when the prostitute starts to undress in his room, I do not see how this and other episodes narrated would not be a source of serious temptations to youthful readers.
4. Morris L. West, The Devil's Advocate
The Devil's Advocate by the English novelist Morris L. West is a recent best seller. It is the story of an English monsignor, Blaise Meredith, Auditor to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, who is afflicted with carcinoma and has only a few months to live. He is sent to Calabria to investigate the sanctity and alleged miracles of the deceased Giacomo Nerone. Before he dies he is able to do a certain amount of good for a number of different people: he buys a bed for the pastor of Gemello Minore so he won't have to continue sleeping with his housekeeper; he partially straightens out a triangle in which a nymphomaniac countess, a dear friend and benefactress of a homosexual painter, is competing with the latter (with rather mixed motives on the part of both) for the affections of the illegitimate adolescent son of the "saint" whose life and miracles he is investigating. This delightful travesty on human nature (which is, of course, to be taken in all seriousness) is fittingly spiced with numerous references to beds, baths, female breasts, phallic symbols, the description of a "nocturnal pollution," and other condiments of the sort to keep the jaded reader turning the pages. In the end the monsignor himself attains the spiritual stature of Abou Ben Adhem — he at least turns out to be "one that loves his fellow men," about which there was some doubt in the beginning. Having lived a year and a half in Italy, I should say that there is hardly a believable character in the book. The only thing more ludicrous than the work itself is its choice for distribution by a Catholic book club. Some restitution might possibly be made to the unfortunate subscribers if they were each given a free copy of Manzoni's Promessi sposi (The Betrothed).
5. Alberto Moravia, Agostino
Moravia (1907-1990) is regarded by a number of critics on both sides of the Atlantic as "one of the best writers in the world today."44 His Agostino, which appeared shortly after the war, has been described in conjunction with his Luca as "two of his most moving narratives."45 The story centers about a lad whose father is dead, and whose beautiful mother is receiving the attentions of a suitor, which makes him something of a rival in her son's eyes. On the beach one day Agostino meets a band of boys headed by an adult homosexual. The boys reveal the mysteries of sex to him and he is later unsuccessfully solicited by the pervert. At the end of the story Agostino tries to enter a house of prostitution with one of his new friends, but he is turned away because of his youth, though his companion gains admittance. Despite the praise which this book has received among literary critics, it has been roundly condemned by at least one ecclesiastic as directly tending to corrupt consciences, especially those of youth.46 It is included in the general condemnation of all of Moravia's works in decree of the Holy Office published on May 20, 1952.
6. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce (1882-1941) is the last work listed in the Ten-Year Reading List of the Great Books Foundation. This alone should indicate the esteem in which it has been held in recent decades. It has been praised for its analysis of "the tensions of adolescence and the confusions of puberty." In many ways it is like the Catcher in the Rye and Agostino. All three dealt with the greatest problem of youth — sex. There is a difference, however. In Catcher, Holden Caulfield thinks that he may learn a few things useful for later marriage from a prostitute, but then changes his mind at the last minute. In Agostino, the thirteen-year old hero is turned down at the door of the brothel. In A Portrait, the sixteen-year-old Stephen Daedulus successfully carries out his schemes, repents, but then loses both his faith and his love for his country in his longing for sensual and artistic beauty. An anonymous reviewer of this book in America aptly described it a year after its publication as "the work of one of those decadent Irishmen, so noisy just now, who scorn quotation marks, write foul words, give detailed descriptions of unseemly thoughts, deeds and conversations, and who no longer have any faith in the Church of their baptism."47 The veiled references to natural and unnatural sex acts, the dour picture given of the clergy, the final apostasy of Stephen, all these add up, in my opinion, to an insidiously immoral book.
7. Graham Greene, The End of the Affair
Graham Greene (1904-1991), a convert to Catholicism in 1939, has at different times gained almost as much notoriety by his bizarre behavior as he has by his books. His latest crusade seems to have been the formation of the John Gordon Society, "in recognition of the struggle he has maintained for so many years against the insidious menace of pornography." The occasion for this attempt at ridicule was the effort taken by the editor of the Sunday Express to see that Lolita was kept out of England, a book which, as Gordon noted in his campaign, Greene had listed as one of the best books of 1955.48 The End of the Affair is the story of the adulterous love of Maurice Bendrix and Sarah Miles as told by the former. The end comes when Maurice realizes that Sarah has promised to give up her life of sin if he is spared during a bombing of London. She becomes a Catholic and works a miracle after her death. As has been frequently observed, the miracle is the weakest part of the plot, and it certainly does not compensate for the painfully frank descriptions of the adulterous unions of the lovers. From various remarks dropped throughout the book, one could learn more about certain aspects of sexual intercourse, particularly psychological, than one could from the ordinary manuals of moral theology. If such details are not thought necessary for the average confessor, their telling seems hardly justified for the average reader by the not-so-bashful Bendrix. There can be little doubt that Cardinal Griffin had this book in mind when in his Advent Letter of 1953 he condemned novels by Catholic writers purporting to be the vehicle for Catholic doctrine, but which by passages giving an "unrestrained portrayal of immoral conduct prove a source of temptation to many of their readers."49
8. Leon Daudet, Le voyage de Shakespeare
Leon Daudet (1867-1942) was a French litterateur and politician who married the granddaughter of Victor Hugo and later divorced her. He was a prolific writer, and his Voyage de Shakespeare (1922) is considered to be one of his four best works. The novel is based upon an imaginary trip of William Shakespeare at the age of twenty to the continent. He sails from Dover to Rotterdam on August 10, 1584, leaving behind his wife and two children. On board ship he recalls to himself an affair he had with a girl of twelve before his marriage. In Rotterdam he runs into a certain "Knight John" who turns out to be a Jesuit in disguise, and who offers him a book, the Spiritual Exercises. After a series of adventures, Shakespeare moves on to Amsterdam where he comes in contact with some rather dissolute characters, but manages to rescue a girl in the Jewish quarter who has been compelled to live incestuously with her father. He continues his travels and at Hamburg runs into a particularly loathsome character, another Jesuit in disguise. Continuing on his course he is rescued from freezing by a farmer, falls in love with the farmer's daughter and seduces her. He then moves on to Copenhagen where he falls in love with an actress. The story ends with his setting out again for Elsinore. On December 14, 1927, the Holy Office declared that the book was ipso iure condemned under the prescription of Canon 1399 and should be placed on the Index.50
9. Leon Daudet, Les Bacchantes
Daudet's Bacchantes, which appeared in 1931, was occasioned by the recent discovery in the Villa of Mysteries near Pompeii of a wonderful series of paintings representing an initiation into the rites of Dionysus, or Bacchus. The story is centered around a group of twentieth-century "Bacchantes." The hero of the tale is Remain Segetan, a widower, who is "the Edison of France." He has invented a machine that can conjure up events that took place hundreds of years before. Assistants in his experiments are two learned neighbors, Felix Devonet and the physician Benalep. Others interested in his work are the actress Ariana and Tullie, the beautiful widow of the wealthy Calvat. There is also the local cure, the abbe Parroy, "un saint homme de quelque 70 ans, universellement respecte, maigre et menu comme le cure d'Ars, et qui, comme lui, vivait dans le surnaturel, au milieu d'une population incroyante." Segetan not only draws his scientific inspiration from Aphrodite, but he finds it necessary after his discoveries to find further consolation in the same. He is blinded by the gunshot of a jealous husband, but regains his sight with the help of the woman he loves through a kind of sympathetic magic. A project is drawn up for the circle to go to Pompeii and there, with the assistance of the machine, call up an ancient initiation at the Villa of Mysteries before it was overwhelmed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The past is effectively evoked in the last chapter, and this provides the occasion for an orgy among the members of the circle. Segetan thus arouses the ire of the husband of the woman he had ambitioned seducing and is trickily murdered. The women in the group then take revenge by doing away with his murderer. This is an unsavory piece, and it is not surprising that it was described as "utterly obscene" by the Holy Office and declared to be ipso iure condemned by the prescription of Canon 1399 §9, the paragraph dealing with obscene books. The book was put on the Index by the Holy Office on February 17, 1932.51 The following day Pope Pius XI approved the decision of the congregation and ordered it to be published.
10. James Joyce, Ulysses
A rather frightening commentary on the age is the observation that Joyce's Ulysses "is the most widely discussed novel of our time, the most influential for technique and style."52 The action of this story takes place in Dublin on a single day in 1904, and an attempt is made to capture all the deeds and desires of as tawdry a group of characters as has ever been assembled between the covers of a single book. The novel has had a checkered history in the courts. When it first began to appear serially in the Little Review in 1920 a complaint was made, and the publishers were fined in the City Magistrate's Court in New York for printing filth. It then came out in book form in Paris in 1922, but was banned in England and in the United States. On December 6, 1933, a decision of Judge John Woolsey declared that the book was not obscene and that it could be brought through customs. However, a good many do not agree with this opinion. Alfred Noyes, for example, in a review of the book when it first came out, declared that it is "simply the foulest book that has ever found its way into print . . . There is no foulness conceivable to the mind of man that has not been poured forth into its imbecile pages."53 More recently Edmund Fuller has described Ulysses and Finnegans Wake together in the following terms: "As a conception of man in his nature and life, like John Randolph's famous rotten mackerel in the moonlight, they shine and stink . . . These reveal Joyce thrashing in convulsions at the end of his unsevered Roman Catholic umbilical cord. In spite of his repudiation of his faith and tradition, he tied himself to it by abuse."54
Much more could be said about each one of these books and their respective authors, but after ordering them according to their relative obscenity, it might be well to evaluate them absolutely. This type of study has been attempted by two Belgian Jesuits with respect to some 55,000 different pieces of fiction, but their work is of no particular advantage to us here since, in the latest edition, they classify as mauvais the worst of their seven categories, Madame Bovary, A Sentimental Journey, A Portrait of the Artist, Agostino, Le voyage, Les Bacchantes, and Ulysses.55 The other three books we have discussed had not as yet been published. Such a blanket condemnation is not very encouraging, but still I think that some comparison among the books themselves may be made. If we would take the figure one as the unity of obscenity, I think that the books might be rated as follows: Madame Bovary 1; A Sentimental Journey 2; The Catcher in the Rye and The Devil's Advocate 4; A Portrait of the Artist and Agostino 5; The End of the Affair 6; Le voyage de Shakespeare and Les Bacchantes 7 or 8; and last, but by no means least, and a book which "completely wrecks the curve," Joyce's Ulysses at 16.
A comparison such as this will afford, I believe, little support to the theory that "anything goes" so long as it does not manifest a "prurient interest" in sex. It seems to me that Daudet's two books, which are precious items in the sense that they are the only ones, as far as I know, that have ever been specifically condemned as coming under the letter of Canon 1399, are just as much "a vision of reality" as Joyce's sordid Ulysses. With a considerable amount of artistry the characters are simply portrayed as leading a certain kind of life, and I cannot see any manifest intent on the part of Daudet to persuade his readers to imitate them. The abbe in Les Bacchantes complains rather bitterly to his bishop about his charges: "Que ce sont des paiens fieffes, Monseigneur . . . de grands esprits sans un ombre d'ame. Ils ont de l'envergure pour le terrestre. Mais, quant au ciel, ils sont des sots." When it comes to specific details of sexual activity, Daudet has lengthier descriptions than Greene in the End of the Affair, but he hardly yields to the Englishman in quality. As for Joyce and his Ulysses, the claim is frequently made that it is not an "obscene" book. Yet I think that a neutral observer will have to confess that its potentialities as an aphrodisiac far surpass those of Daudet's two works.
Ulysses, of course, presents a further problem involving Canon 1399 §6, which ipso iure prohibits "books that attack or deride any Catholic dogmas" or "detract from divine worship." As Joyce's biographer has aptly observed: "His mind longed to adore and to desecrate."56 Just because it is fiction does an author have the privilege of portraying a Black Mass in a brothel, of twisting profound sayings of our Lord into adulterous meanings, of punning the Confiteor, as is done in Finnegans Wake, into a vivid exhortation to sexual intercourse? To express indignation at such blasphemies may seem uncouth, but is there any doubt that Joyce ever meant anything but what he said? And if not, why should he not be condemned? Father Faber was perhaps excessively aggrieved at Milton's Arianism, but surely his words are applicable, or so it seems to me, to Joyce: "How can a country have need of anything — policy, courage, talent, or anything which is unblessed of God — and how can any talent in any subject matter be blessed by the Eternal Father for one who in prose and in verse denied, ridiculed, blasphemed the Godhead of the Eternal Son? Si quis non amat Dominum Jesum Christum, sit anathema — so wrote St. Paul."57
Much of the unfortunate enthusiasm that has been expressed for the authors here discussed has been due to an insistence on form rather than on content in works of art, a certain indication of intellectual decline. Surely the hours spent in the study and reading of these authors might be more profitably spent on less dangerous subjects: "He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled with it."58
Notes
36 Quoted in G. Sagehomme, S.J., and E. Dupuis, S.J., Repertoire alphabetique de 15.500 auteurs, avec 55.000 de leurs ouvrages qualifies quant a leur valeur morale8 (Tournai, 1950), p. ix.
37 See the (London) Tablet 202 (1953), p. 540.
38 (London) Tablet 206 (1955), p. 48.
39 Our Bishops Speak 1919-1951, edited by R. M. Huber, O.F.M.Conv. (Milwaukee, 1952).
40 For the text of this statement see H. C. Gardiner, S.J., Catholic Viewpoint on Censorship (Garden City, New York, 1958), pp. 185-92.
41 J. M. Pernicone, The Ecclesiastical Prohibition of Books (Washington, D.C., 1932), p. 120; R. A. Burke, C.S.V., What Is the Index? (Milwaukee, 1952), p. 38.
42 Wm. T. Brewster, "Sentimental Journey, A," Encyclopedia Americana 24 (1955). p., 573.
43 Riley Hughes, review in Catholic World 174 (1951), p. 154.
44 C. J. Rolo, "Alberto Moravia," Atlantic Monthly 195 (eb., 1955), p. 69.
45 William Dunlea, "Moralist Without an Ideal," Commonweal 71 (1960), p. 680.
46 R. Spiazzi, O.P., "Adnotationes," Monitor Ecclesiasticus 77 (1952), pp. 391-392.
47 America 16 (1917), p. 406.
48 Time, March 2, 1959, p. 72.
49 (London) Tablet 202 (1953), p. 540.
50 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 19 (1927), p. 446: ad praescriptum canonis 1399 Codicis iuris canonici ipso iure damnatum esse declarant atque in Indicem librorum prohibitorum inserendum mandarunt.
51 Acta Apostolicae Sedis 24 (1932), p. 71: ad praescriptum canonis 1399 §9 Codicis iuris canonici, ipso iure damnatum esse declararunt atque in Indicem librorum prohibitorum inserendum mandarunt librum quam maxime obscenum.
52 F. N. Magill and D. Kohler, Masterplots 1.2 (New York, 1955), p. 1040.
53 Quoted by Herbert Gorman in James Joyce (New York, 1948), p. 295, where many other similar expressions of opinion may be found.
54 Edmund Fuller, Man in Modern Fiction (New York, 1958), pp. 123-27.
55 G. Sagehomme, S.J., and E. Dupuis, S. J., Repertoire alphabetique de 15.500 auteurs, avec 55.000 de leurs ouvrages qualifies quant a leur valeur morale8 (Tournai, 1950).
56 Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (New York, 1959), p. 49.
57 Quoted by Father Walter, O.S.B., in "Literature and Dogma," The Homiletic and Pastoral Review 35 (1934-35), p. 172.
58 Eccles. 13.1. See J. J. Walsh, "Eliminating Sex Incitements," The Homiletic and Pastoral Review 30 (1929-30), pp. 935-45.
See Part I of this article, The Line Between Liberty and Lechery
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