Waugh, Evelyn (Vol. 1) - Waugh, Evelyn 1903–1966
Waugh, Evelyn 1903–1966
An English satirical novelist, Waugh is the author of The Loved One, Vile Bodies, and A Handful of Dust. (See obituary in Contemporary Authors, Vols. 25-28.)
Religion, the old Catholic religion, is presented in Waugh's later novels not as a living source of spiritual values which can redeem the modern waste land, but as what might perhaps be called the stiff upper lip of the soul; it gives the believer dignity of bearing, like wearing evening dress in the jungle. Thus religion provides aristocratic gestures to shore against the ruins. This is an odd use of religion in fiction.
David Daiches, in his The Present Age in British Literature, Indiana University Press, 1958, p. 110.
Mr. Waugh is both a sound moralist and an observant humorist and it is his humour which makes palatable the unpleasant medicines he prescribes for his readers.
The world...
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