Author calls for end of 'academic embargo' on G.K. Chesterton

Despite having a profound influence on the 20th century, English author G.K. Chesterton has remained virtually unknown to modern readers. This discrepancy may be due to an unwillingness for universities and colleges to include him in literary and history curriculum.

“The academic embargo against recognition of Chesterton’s stature remains in place, for reasons which remain a matter of speculation,” states William Oddie in the introduction to his biography published earlier this year, Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC.

Perhaps it is the effect Chesterton has on college students. In 1909, Mohandas Gandhi read one of Chesterton’s regular columns for the Illustrated London News, and was, according to his biographers, “thunderstruck” by the idea of truly Indian independence. He translated the article, and it became the basis for his book Hind Swaraj.

C.S. Lewis, who read Chesterton while serving in the army, has said that it was Chesterton who first showed him that the Christian world view made sense. J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as other Inklings, were also greatly influenced by Chesterton.

His friends, H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, though they did not agree with him upheld him as an important literary figure, both in their own time and for future generations.  T.H White, author of The Once and Future King, remarked upon G.K.C.’s death that he had been the greatest living master of the English language.

“The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton,” remarked Shaw.

Indeed – the world has forgotten him.

However, his influence remains profound, even among today’s writers. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett have cited Chesterton as an influence on their work, going so far was to write him in to their works as characters. Dean Koontz quotes him in his books, particularly in his latest novel Relentless. Michael Crichton, himself a visionary of the role of science in the future, referred to Chesterton as a prophet who saw better than the experts of his day the course science would take over the next 100 years, and its impact on our society.

So far in 2009, there have been three biographical works of Chesterton written, Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy: The Making of GKC, G.K. Chesterton: A Prophet for the 21st Century, and The Inconvenient Adventures of Uncle Chestnut, a children’s introduction to Chesterton. Perhaps the increase in popular and scholarly interest in Chesterton is an indication of a revival of interest in him and his writing.

Why then has G.K. Chesterton been left out of academia? Perhaps, after seeing what Chesterton’s influence has done to shape the literary and political reality the 20th Century, colleges and universities are wary of that degree of change in the 21st Century.