Southern Gothic: The Monster as Freak in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor

2019 ◽  
pp. 205-218
Author(s):  
Marita Nadal
Keyword(s):  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
Southern Gothic

A Good Man is a Trickster to Find

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Tye
Keyword(s):  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Reform ◽  
American South ◽  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
Southern Gothic ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The American South ◽  
Over The Top ◽  
Traditional Storytelling

In my presentation, I will demonstrate the contrast between the pioneer of the Southern Grotesque, Flannery O’Connor, and her famous story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” with Taylor’s use of the gothic in his YA novel. O’Connor adapted her version of the gothic from her predecessors such as Shelley and Poe. But she veers away from the creation of a fantastical monster tradition of the Romantics to drive the focus of the “monstrous” to the very human but harmful behaviors of her characters. Similarly, Taylor’s narrative does away with the over-the-top fantasy of the Romantic tradition and instead chooses to set the narrative in a realistic space with relevant characters. The difference between O’Connor and Taylor is that in O’Connor’s Southern Gothic the setting is the pinnacle of her story while Taylor’s Indigeneity shines through with his humor, traditional storytelling, and orality in his narrative. Differences aside, it is clear that the motive of each text is a call for social reform in O’Connor’s criticism of the social structure of the American South and in Taylor’s criticism of colonization.

Flannery O'Connor and religious epistemology

2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-369
Author(s):  
JASON BAEHR
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Ability ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
Epistemic Virtue ◽  
Religious Epistemology ◽  
Southern Gothic ◽  
Intellectual Character ◽  
Cognitive Faculties ◽  
Intellectual Skills

AbstractWhat are the demands of religious inquiry? It can be tempting to think of these demands in strictly epistemic terms, e.g. as a function of the inquirer's background beliefs, cognitive faculties, natural cognitive ability, intellectual skills, and intellectual character. In this article, I extrapolate an alternative model of religious inquiry from three stories by the Southern Gothic writer Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964). According to the model, a person's fitness for religious inquiry also depends on whether she possesses a certain moral posture. In particular, I argue that something like moral humility functions as an epistemic virtue in the theistic domain.

Flannery O'Connor : Un paon pour ange gardien

1988 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-48
Author(s):  
Marie-Claire Pasquier
Keyword(s):  
Flannery O'connor

The Christian Humanism of Flannery O'Connor.

1973 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 137
Author(s):  
Irving Malin ◽  
David Eggenschwiler
Keyword(s):  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
Christian Humanism

The Pruning Word: The Parables of Flannery O'Connor.

1976 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 409
Author(s):  
John Ditsky ◽  
John R. May
Keyword(s):  
Flannery O'connor

A Southern Drawl from beyond the Grave

1966 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 99-101
Author(s):  
Rene Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Flannery O'connor ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
New Yorker ◽  
Book Award ◽  
National Book

The bell has finally tolled for Flannery O'Connor. The National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize have both passed up the opportunity to honor her posthumous collection of short stories, Everything that Rises Must Converge. Still, you can't help wondering what best-sellerdom could have done to a book like this. Few will read it through and most of those who stop at the halfway mark will become rabid anti-O'Connorites. Of all the first-rate American writers of the century, she is the easiest to put down. Her characters are self-conciously larger than life, her prose laden with portent in every semi-colon, her plotting so relentlessly tragic that every sentence is like a step – inevitable and often predictable – toward a witches' brew of a Grand Guignol finale. Impatient readers will feel Flannery is getting nowhere pretty slow. After some stirring and simmering of emotions, they'll quit and stop reading short of the climax, with the worst possible results. An O'Connor story is not one of those “New Yorker” Flirtations that ramble charmingly and stop coquettishly: Flannery O'Connor is no playful, teasing minx.

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