G.K. Chesterton’s ‘The Wisdom of Father Brown

Seminar paper from the year 2003 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, Technical University of Braunschweig, 7 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Gilbert Keith Chesterton started writing when he was a schoolboy and today his work is well-known all over the world. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he considered himself primarily a journalist. But he also wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 books, hundreds of poems, five plays, five novels and more than two hundred short stories, including a popular series on Father Brown which I think is one of his greatest works. These stories on Father Brown have been written between 1911 and 1935 and are summarized in five books called The Innocence of Father Brown , The Wisdom of Father Brown , The Incredulity of Father Brown , The Secret of Father Brown and The Scandal of Father Brown . All the books constitute a fascinating summary of Chesterton practising what he preached 1 . In my work I will concentrate on the second Father Brown book called The Wisdom of Father Brown . It was published in 1914 and contains twelve stories on the priestdetective Father Brown. First I will give short summaries of the four stories I chose from the book and afterwards I will focus on the main character Father Brown, his attitudes and his development. To do this I will mainly give attention to the four stories I selected but also prove some of my statements by referring to one of the other stories. I will also compare Chesterton’s views with the attitudes of his figure Father Brown.