The Critical Response to Flannery O'Connor

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Douglas Robillard

Book Code: GR2442

ISBN: 0-313-32442-5

ISBN-13: 978-0-313-32442-0

DOI:

344 pages

Praeger Publishers

Publication: 12/30/2004

List Price: $107.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)

Availability: Print on demand

Media Type: Hardcover

Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4

Subjects:

Literature » Literature (General)

Series Title: Critical Responses in Arts and Letters

Series Number: 43

Endorsement From Virginia Wray,
Professor of English
Lyon College,
President, the Flannery O'Connor Society: Douglas Robillard, Jr. has pulled together an excellent collection of criticism on Flannery O'Connor's fiction. For the O'Connor scholar it provides a convenient collection of many of the significant reviews of O'Connor's books and even introduces some of us to a few essays that slipped under the MLA bibliography radar. For the O'Connor novice, in addition to making easily accessible a large chunk of O'Connor criticism, this book's very readable introductory essay critiques the growth of a literary reputation from the initial bafflement of much of the literary world in 1952 when Wise Blood was published to O'Connor's entry into American canon celebrated with the 1998 American Library edition of her collected works to contemporary new directions in O'Connor studies.
Endorsement From Marshall Bruce Gentry,
Professor of English
Georgia College & State University,
Editor, Flannery O'Connor Review: Douglas Robillard has judiciously selected reviews and scholarly articles to present, in chronological order, the spectrum of critical opinion on Flannery O'Connor's works, from the earliest reviews (some of which Robillard presents because they are so entertainingly wrong-headed) to several of the best recent innovations in O'Connor scholarship. Beginning students of O'Connor as well as professional scholars will benefit from this rich gathering.

Description: As the author of such classic American short stories as "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "Everything That Rises Must Converge," and "Revelation," Flannery O'Connor has always been recognized as a distinctive voice in American literature. A devoutly Catholic, Southern author with serious literary ambitions, she dealt with topics such as the operation of grace in ordinary life, and the nature of evil, sin, and redemption. Fifty years after the publication of her first novel, Wise Blood, her fiction is acclaimed for its high literary value and with the publication of her Collected Works, her work has become part of the canon of American literature. This volume includes articles on the racial, critical, and theological controversies surrounding O'Connor's work. And, rather than presenting a consensus of literary opinion, it shows how different critics arrive at radically different interpretations of a given O'Connor story or novel. An introductory essay examines the growth of O'Connor's literary reputation and outlines the major approaches taken by literary scholars to interpreting and elucidating her work. The 47 pieces collected in this volume represent the diverse reactions her work has created. The items are grouped into three sections, each representing a chronological period: the first section compiles the reactions of critics during her lifetime, the second section compiles criticism from the 25 years that elapsed between her death in 1964 until the 1989 publication of her Collected Works, and the third section brings together new critical approaches that foreshadow future trends in O'Connor criticism.

Table of Contents:

Preface
An O'Connor Chronology
Introduction
Flannery O'Connor: The Growth of a Literary Reputation by Douglas Robillard, Jr.
Contemporary Responses: 1952-64
Southern Dissonance (1952)
A Case of Possession (1952) by John W. Simons
To Win by Default (1952) by Isaac Rosenfeld
Outraged Or Embarrassed (1953) by Joe Lee Davis
Such Nice People (1955)
That Region (1955) by Walter Elder
Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood (1958) by Caroline Gordon
Flannery O'Connor: A Note on Literary Fashions (1958) by Louis Rubin, Jr.
View from a Rock: The Fiction of Flannery O'Connor and J.F. Powers (1958) by Sister M. Bernetta Quinn
God-Intoxicated Hillbillies (1960)
A Vision Deep and Narrow (1960) by Frank Warnke
Two Up for America (1960) by Joan Didion
The Redemptive Tradition of Southern Rural Life (1960) by James Greene
The Outside and the Inside: Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away (1960) by Sumner J. Ferris

Flannery O'Connor's Devil (1962) by John Hawkes

Flannery O'Connor's View of God and Man (1964) by Ted R. Spivey

Posthumous Responses, 1964-89

Flannery O'Connor: A Prose Elegy (1964) by Thomas Merton

The Test by Fire: Flannery O'Connor (1965) by Louise Y. Gossett

Of Ultimate Things (1965)

The Top Is A New Bottom (1965) by Guy Davenport

Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965) by James P. Degnan

Flannery O'Connor (1966) by Stanley Edgar Hyman

Flannery O'Connor: Christian Allegorist (1968) by Thomas M. Lorch

The Paradigm of Flannery O'Connor's True Country (1968) by Robert Drake

On Flannery O'Connor (1969) by Saul Maloff

Flannery O'Connor (1969) by Miles D. Orvell

The Evolution of Wise Blood (1970) by Stuart L. Burns Growing Up: The Violent Bear It Away (1970) by Josephine Hendin

Convergence in Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge (1970) by Patricia Dinneen Maida

The Christian Humanism of Flannery O'Connor (1972) by David Eggenschwiler

Flannery O'Connor and the Demonic (1973) by Preston M. Browning, Jr.

The Protestantism of Flannery O'Connor (1975) by Robert Milder

The Parables of Flannery O'Connor (1976) by John R. May

The Habit of Being (1977) by Sally Fitzgerald

Flannery O'Connor: Letters Larger Than Life (1979) by Robert Coles

The Double in Flannery O'Connor's Stories (1980) by Frederick Asals

The Prison of the Self: Isolation in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction (1980) by Paul W. Nisly

Home to Her True Country: The Final Trilogy of Flannery O'Connor (1980) by Diane Tolomeo

The Eye vs. the Body: Individual and Communal Grotesquerie in Wise Blood (1982) by Marshall Bruce Gentry

O'Connor's Sacred Landscapes (1985) by Louise H. Westling

Wise Blood: The Rain of History (1987) by John R. Desmond

After the Canonization: Flannery O'Connor Revisited (1989) by Benjamin Griffith

The Critics Bear It Away (1989) by Frederick Crews

New Directions in Criticism, 1990-2001

The Artificial Nigger: A Dialogic Reading (1991) by Mary Neff Shaw

The Being of Illness: The Language of Being Ill (1997) by Sue Walker

Literary Lessons: The Male Gaze, the Figure Woman (2000) by Sarah Gordon

Blinded by Whiteness: Revisiting Flannery O'Connor and Race (2001) by Julie Armstrong

Selected Bibliography

Index

LC Card Number: 2004053435

LCC Class: PS3565

Dewey Class: 813


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