Flannery O'Connor

By Jill Peláez Baumgaertner

""To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures."" --Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners Drowning in a river, the violent murder of a grandmother in the backwoods of Georgia, and the trans-genital display of a freak at a carnival show are all shocking literary devices used by Flannery O'Connnor, one of American literature's best pulp fiction writers. More than thirty-five years after her death, readers are still shocked by O'Connor's grotesque images. Dr. Jill Baumgaertner concentrates on O'Connor's use of emblems, those moments of sudden and horrid illumination when the sacred and the profane merge as sacrament. This readable volume is ideal for college students, O'Connor scholars, or those wishing to better understand southern gothic fiction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1625640250
• ISBN13: 9781625640253
• Release Date: May 2013
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Considers Flannery O'Connor's use of visual representation, metaphors, and foreshadowing with explic

Baumgaertner examines Flannery O'Connor's interest in exaggerated visual representation and discusses how "sight and insight are intimately connected metaphors" in her stories. Refers to how, "At key moments -- often at the height of a story's crisis, sometimes at a moment of foreshadowing -- O'Connor clicks the camera and catches a strange picture." Ties this technique to seventeenth-century "emblems": visual representations that "literalized a motto, epigram, or scriptural passage to provoke a new response to an old and often too familiar saying." Discusses O'Connor's stories, "The Geranium," "The Barber," "The Crop," "The Turkey," "Good Country People," "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," and "The Comforts of Home," in this context. Considers the role of belief in the work of the Christian writer and the difficulty such writers have "in making revelatory action believable to the modern reader." Notes that "the closer and more prolonged her characters' encounters with the divine," the more frequent the appearance of emblems in O'Connor's fiction. Offers readings of "Parker's Back," "The Lame Shall Enter First," "The Artificial Nigger," "The Displaced Person," "A Temple of the Holy Ghost," "The Enduring Chill" and "The River." Also discusses her view of the sacrament and her use of symbols and images of the Holy Ghost in this context. Follows with biblically informed readings of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "A Late Encounter With the Enemy," "A View of the Woods," "A Circle in the Fire," "Everything That Rises Must Converge," "Greenleaf," and "Revelation." Describes her novel, Wise Blood, as the story of "a modern pilgrim who does not want to progress, who is in fact more interested in moving backwards than forwards." Explores the "allegoric and emblematic resonance in The Violent Bear It Away," noting that the three principal characters, "The Christian, the Modern Man, [and] the boy," could represent "characters from a morality play, or archetypes from mythology." Closes with a close examination of "Judgement Day," noting that O'Connor hurried her revisions and was "still not completely satisfied with the story." R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University