Le Génie du christianisme Reading Order

What is the main argument of Le Génie du christianisme?

Le Génie du christianisme (1802) argues that Christianity is the source of all the beauty and greatness of Western civilization — the specific aesthetic and moral resources that make European art, literature, and architecture superior to anything produced in other civilizations or in pre-Christian antiquity. Chateaubriand makes this argument on three levels. First, he argues that Christian theology — the doctrines of original sin, redemption, grace, and the immortality of the soul — provides art with subjects of infinite depth and moral complexity that pagan mythology cannot match: the suffering of Christ is a more fertile subject for great art than the adventures of the Olympians. Second, he argues that specifically Christian institutions — the medieval Church, monastic life, Gothic architecture, sacred music, the great religious orders — are among the highest achievements of human civilization and produced the cultural forms (the cathedral, the requiem, the university) that define European identity. Third, he argues that the specific emotional states that Christianity cultivates — 'le vague des passions' (the vagueness of the passions), the aspiration toward the infinite, the consciousness of sin, the longing for transcendence — are exactly the emotional states that Romantic literature requires. This third argument is the most original and most influential: Chateaubriand is claiming that the Romantic movement itself — the movement of which he was a founding figure — is the natural literary expression of Christianity, and that without Christian culture, the Romantic sensibility he was promoting would have no ground to stand on.