In addition to a topic of debate and mild confusion, religion is also a subject that permits the basis for many different creative venues, including literature. Novelists of all walks of life, and from every possible time period, have used religious allusions in their creative works. They might be simply passing comments on the way to a very different plot, or they may very well be the foundation upon which the entire work is based.
Religion is a popular subject because no one seems to be in agreement, and there are more avenues down which to travel than with, for example, alien abductions. A novel about angels, demons, the afterlife, God, Satan, persecution, or undoing will capture the readers’ attention and hold it until the very end. It will inspire controversy on the most primitive level because, if you choose to use religion in your writing, someone is going to disagree with you; it’s a certainty.
Throughout history, some of the most memorable and acclaimed literary works have been rooted in one religious context or another, baiting readers to sink deep into the mysticism and possibilities they create. Many have been honored only posthumously because the people of their time thought them blasphemous.
I have by no means included all of the various books and authors who have used religion as a basis for their story, but it will give you an idea of how it is done and who wrote about what throughout history.
Dante’s poem, which we now refer to as The Divine Comedy, was originally called simply Commedia, which means “comedy.” We will probably never know why he called it that, though literary scholars believe it is because the poem ends in the most joyous place of all: Heaven. Later, it became known as Divino, meaning “divine,” for obvious reasons, and eventually was titled The Divine Comedy, as it is called today.
Dante was a brilliant mind of his time, a devout Catholic who wanted to capture the beauty of heaven and the depravity of hell in words, a goal that he most eloquently achieved. Many of his descriptions and ideas came from the Bible itself, while others were figments of his brilliant imagination.
His first account of the afterlife is the Inferno, which is the Italian word for “hell.” He describes hell as nine concentric circles of gradually increasing evil; the first of which holds those guilty of basic carnal sins. As he descends the levels, led by the poet Vergil, he meets the heretics, the murderers, the suicides, the hypocrites, and the blasphemers. And, at the very center of the funnel, sits the gruesome three-headed Satan, who munches eternally on the head of Judas Iscariot.
After he has seen all that hell has to offer, Dante moves on to Purgatorio, where souls remain in limbo until they have earned the right to move on to heaven. Whereas the Inferno was arranged in nine concentric circles of varying degrees, Purgatorio is a seven-story mountain, and each terrace on the mountain represents one of the Catholic Church’s Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth, Wrath, Gluttony, Envy, Pride, Lust, and Greed.
An angel appears and carves seven letter P’s on Dante’s forehead, and as they ascend the mountain of Purgatorio, he purges the sins and the letters are erased. The natures of the sins become less grievous as he climbs the mountain.
And finally, Dante is rewarded by his entrance into Paradiso, which is Italian for Heaven. Like the other two chambers, Heaven is divided into nine hollow crystal spheres that orbit the earth like individual planets. Each of the sections determines how saintly a person behaved in life, and with each step, a person gets closer to God. They do not argue and they are not jealous of each other, however, because each soul is comfortable with his or her favor with God.
“My will and my desire were both resolved,
As in a wheel in every motion driven,
By Love, which moves the sun and all the stars.” – Dante, Paradiso
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Plays & Sonnets
Shakespeare, one of the most honored playwrights and poets to ever grace the planet, used numerous biblical and religious allusions to further illustrate his characters’ thoughts and speech. He wittily and craftily incorporated Christian beliefs into his stories, capturing the hearts of all who read his work.
For example, in Hamlet, Shakespeare uses the ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father to describe his visit to Purgatory as things “that would make your hair stand on end.” He also used references to God in his sonnets, where he often compared the love of another to the love of God for His creation.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
Pilgrims, Holy Cities & Holy Wars
History can never forget a great allegorical novelist, and John Bunyan certainly is one of the most popular of all time During the 17th and 18th centuries, Pilgrim’s Progress, his most notable work, was owned by millions of people throughout Europe and America, almost as many who owned the Bible. It is tale of the Traveler who crosses many obstacles, including the Slough of Despond (temptation), in order to reach the Celestial City (heaven).
“But glorious it was to see how the open region was filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters and pipers, with singers and players on stringed instruments, to welcome the pilgrims as they went up, and followed one another in at the beautiful gate of the city.” – John Bunyan on The Celestial City, Pilgrim’s Progress.
In addition to Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan is also responsible for The Holy City and A Few Sighs From Hell, which detail the wonders and horrors of Heaven and Hell respectively. Later, he wrote another allegorical novel called The Holy War, which is about the citizens of a city called Mansoul (ha, ha), which has been taken over by Diabolus (Satan). In the end, it is rescued by Emmanuel (Christ) in eternal victory.
C.S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)
Screwtape & Wormwood: Mere Christianity
When this imaginative author first set out to write Mere Christianity, his goal was to prove that religion was a farce. An avid agnostic, Lewis felt that logic and insight would eventually win over, and that he could prove once and for all that Christianity was based on fiction, not fact.
Through the course of writing Mere Christianity, however, he became convinced that Christianity made perfect sense, and he changed the point of view entirely. After that, nearly all of his books – whether for children or adults – contained some type of religious reference, and were often allegorical.
Lewis is responsible for The Chronicles of Narnia, The Great Divorce, the introduction to Paradise Lost by John Milton, and The Screwtape Letters, which is a series of correspondence between an older demon (Screwtape) and his less-experienced demon nephew (Wormwood).
John Milton (1608 – 1674)
Paradise Lost
Milton was a biblical scholar in the truest sense of the world – he knew the Bible cover-to-cover in English, Greek, and Hebrew. A native on England, he astounded the entire world with his account of the third chapter of Genesis: Paradise Lost.
In poem form, Milton explored the hows, whys, and whatifs of Eve’s temptation and man’s fall from grace. Many of the Pagan gods appeared as demons before Adam and Eve, pushing them to side with the serpent, who was a symbol for Satan. It also goes into God’s promises for mankind, and why humanity failed Him in the most crucial moment of human history. Milton’s work was both insightful and biting, for he spared no judgement for those who fail God.
The sequel to Paradise Lost was Paradise Regained, in which he recounts the stories from the Gospels about Jesus’ temptation in the desert. He explores the differences between man and Christ, as Jesus rebuked the Devil’s promises and Adam and Eve most certainly did not.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)
Faust vs. Mephistopheles
In a classic and much older “Devil Went Down To Georgia” tale, Faust tells the story of a man (Faust, of course) who sells his soul to the devil (Mephistopheles) for the promise of worldly pleasures and powers. It is an epic, poetic play involving the division of the soul and the basic human desire to do right. Faust makes many mistakes in his journey, including impregnating a young girl, but in the end he works hard to better the world, and he is rewarded by entrance into Heaven upon his death (must to the anger of the suave Mephistopheles).
Goethe’s work has been the inspiration for many similar works, including the opera Mefistofele and the recent computer game Faust and Mephisto. In both the literary and the pop culture world, Mephistopheles is about as well known an alias for Satan as Beelzebub or Prince of Darkness.
Nathanial Hawthorne (1804 – 1864)
The Scarlet Railroad…Sort of
We know him for his tragic tale of love in The Scarlet Letter and for his masterpiece The House of Seven Gables, but few have read his religious parody The Celestial Railroad. Like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Hawthorne’s character takes a long journey through both hell and heaven, describing the sights and the sounds and how he feels. But unlike most other literary works of this nature, it is not a difficult journey filled with conflict and strife, but a comfortable vacation on a luxurious train that takes him on a magical tour of the afterlife.
Hawthorne was making fun of liberal Christianity and the growing public consensus that religion was all about love and peace and harmony (hence, the parody). It was meant as a wake-up call to the Christian population to show that their current beliefs were naïve and shameful, but it failed miserably in that capacity.
Aldus Huxley (1894 – 1964)
A Brave New Hell
Moving into more contemporary fiction, Aldus Huxley is most widely known for his science fictional novel Brave New World. The British author is also responsible for The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, which explore the idea that drug use does not always lead to Heaven, and that human beings must be responsible for their sins. Huxley often wrote about the use of drugs for controlling the population and for creating a “universal consciousness” by the powers that be. Brave New World was a secular work, but these other two novels were decidedly religious in nature, and used various themes from the Bible to illustrate his hard-earned points.
As you can see from this brief escapade into the world of religious literature, some of the most famous novelists and playwrights of our time used religious allusions and foundations for the subjects of their plots. They incorporated good and evil; Satan and God; Heaven and Hell; Angels and Demons; and all other sorts of polarities to illustrate beliefs and non-beliefs to the rest of the world.
Reference:
A Brave New World, by Aldus Huxley Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan Hamlet by William Shakespeare The Divine Comedy by Dante Holy War by John Bunyan The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis Paradise Lost by John Milton Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne The Celestial Railroad by Nathanial Hawthorne
