Holy and Profane Love in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Mr Fortune Fictions

Abstract

Focussing on Mr Fortune’s Maggot and ‘The Salutation’, the essay argues that dialogues with Platonic philosophy and Pauline theology are finely threaded through Warner’s fictions. It suggests that Warner strips the ideas of agape and eros of their divine pretensions, confines them to the earth, and sees them in a profane light.

Keywords

• Warner
• Mr Fortune’s Maggot
• ‘The Salutation’
• agape
• eros
• Plato