In William Dean Howells' Criticism and Fiction, he argues that honest truth makes literature good, rather than how famous the author is. He uses English literature as his example as he contrasts Jane Austen with other authors like, Bronte, Thackeray, Dickens, and Eliot. Howells commends Austen for using simple truths and, "instructs a man to think what he likes is good, instead of teaching him first to distinguish what is good before he likes it" (Howells 1). Her work is also loved for its truthful character, not solely on her ability to write or convey her own qualities through her work. He compares her to Anthony Trollope, who also wrote with entire truthfulness, rather than the romantic-type authors of his day. Howells thinks authors should write with detail towards that which is good because it conveys truth, rather than giving of details of beautiful or ugly things, which they consider good or bad not based on the truth of the statement.
The arguments and claims that Howells presents in Criticism and Fiction closely align with the what Berger, in "Ways of Seeing," calls bogus religiosity. Bogus religiosity in the context of Criticism and Fiction appears when Howells realizes that the authors, more than the truths they present, account for the approval or disapproval of criticizers and readers. Howells writes, "Because English criticism, in the presence of the Continental masterpieces, has continued provincial and special and personal, and has expressed a love and a hate which had to do with the quality of the artist rather than the character of his work" (Howells 1). Both Berger and Howells want and explain that readers not fall to mystification but rather engage the truths, though they may be few in English texts, that the authors build in their works.
Why is England the only European nation that Howells lists that has this specific problem addressed in the essay, rather than other authors that he mentions, like Scandinavian, Latin, and Slavic authors?
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