The Word and the Wheel: Navigating the Incarnation in Twentieth-Century Literature

Abstract

This essay maintains that an incarnational aesthetic often privileges the concrete over the abstract, transcends the dichotomy between the secular and the sacred, and offers a glimpse into the intersection of time and eternity, as evidenced in the works of Kathleen Norris, Madeleine L’Engle, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Jorie Graham, though such themes are given particular resonance in the non-linear narrative technique of Graham Greene’s novel The End of the Affair. Greene seeks to represent the simultaneity of past, present, and future in the cyclical technique of his novel, which offers the unreliable narrator a redemptive entrance into God’s wheeling story of eternal love. The revelation of Christ’s Incarnation and a revaluation of corporeal presence stand at the heart of this novel, underscoring how human intimacy is a window into divine intimacy.