Thornton Wilder and Amos Wilder: Writing Religion in Twentieth-Century America

Thornton Wilder, the only author to have won the Pulitzer Prize for both drama and fiction, frequently portrays characters struggling with religious and theological issues. His work has been examined by critics in connection with American Puritanism, existentialism, and Vedantic literature, but little attention has been paid to the works of Thornton’s brother Amos, an ordained minister, poet, biblical scholar, literary critic, and professor at Harvard. Thornton Wilder and Amos Wilder: Writing Religion in Twentieth-Century America is the first book to explore the relationship between Thornton’s work and his brother Amos’s scholarship. Previous critics of Thornton’s works have claimed that they describe timeless human values. Christopher Wheatley, on the contrary, argues that Wilder is primarily interested in the historical context of ideas, the ways in which they are a product of their time. He demonstrates how this parallels elements in Amos’s biblical scholarship. For the most part scholars have also treated Wilder’s works as if his ideas were static throughout his career. Wheatley contends that Wilder's early works of fiction and drama examine religion in times of historical crisis, whereas his later works demonstrate a deep concern about the intellectual, social, economic, and spiritual currents of contemporary America, as well as the influences of existentialism and postwar skepticism on his evolving religious ideas.