Brideshead Remodernized
by Jonathan Pitcher
University College London
“I have left behind illusion,” I said to myself. “Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions—with the aid of my five senses.”
I have since learned that there is no such world, but then, as the car turned out of sight of the house, I thought it took no finding, but lay all about me at the end of the avenue.
—Charles Ryder in Brideshead Revisited (154)
In the case of the past it is harder for us to get the shock … . Everything that is strange can be interpreted in a familiar way, or at least ignored.
—C. J. F. Martin in An Introduction to Medieval Philosophy (13)
Even the briefest of glimpses at any recent bibliography’s suggested list of secondary texts regarding Brideshead indicates just how belabored our postmodern n