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1 results

  • Chapter 7 - G. K. Chesterton

  • from Part II - 1900–1945
  • Edited by Rachel Potter, University of East Anglia, Matthew Taunton, University of East Anglia
  • Book:
    The British Novel of Ideas
    Published online:
    05 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024, pp 134-149

  • Summary

    G. K. Chesterton’s debut novel, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, promotes what he called his ‘antiquated dogmas’ and ‘dead creeds’. Pitting the vendors of Pump Street against the magnates of Kensington and Bayswater, Chesterton sides with local ownership as against capitalism; slowness instead of speed; evolution for revolution; and tradition not modernity. However, in The Napoleon of Notting Hill Chesterton tests and questions all ideas – including his own. The key takeaway from Chesterton’s novel of ideas is not that some ideas are superior to others but that all social and political creeds are bound to be vacuous (and silly) unless they are based on external, communal frames of reference: on higher, unifying ideals that should underpin them.