The World of Flannery O'Connor

by Josephine Hendin, Douglas Robillard Jr. (Foreword by)

Overview

Josephine Hendin's landmark study explores the fiction that erupted from Flannery O'Connor's enigmatic contradictions: she was the dutiful daughter of a conservative Southern family, the uncompromising Roman Catholic, the stoic figure enduring a painful fatal illness, and the author of strange and violent tales that exploded all the virtues of heritage, obedience, and faith. The tension between those disparate selves drives the complexity of Flannery O'Connor's literary achievement into the center of American experience. While other critics have chosen to treat Flannery O'Connor as a traditional Southern or dogmatic Catholic writer, Hendin takes a perceptively fresh view of her work in the context of contemporary fiction. Hendin illuminates all her fiction, beginning with the early novels and ending with Everything that Rises Must Converge. Differentiating her from other Southern writers, Hendin shows how O'Connor created a unique art, remarkable for its portrait of the agony of American yearning.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781725225053
Publisher:	Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date:	05/29/2009
Series:	Flannery O'Connor Studies Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	194
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Josephine Hendin is Professor of English at New York University. She is the author of Vulnerable People: A View of American Fiction Since 1945, HeartBreakers: Women and Violence in American Culture and Literature, and editor of the The Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture. Her novel, The Right Thing to Do won an American Book Award. Her literary essays have appeared in The New Republic, Harper's Magazine, American Literary History and other publications.
Josephine Hendin is Professor of English at New York University. She is the author of Vulnerable People: A View of American Fiction Since 1945, HeartBreakers: Women and Violence in American Culture and Literature, and editor of the The Concise Companion to Postwar American Literature and Culture. Her novel, The Right Thing to Do won an American Book Award. Her literary essays have appeared in The New Republic, Harper's Magazine, American Literary History and other publications.

Table of Contents

1 In Search of Flannery O'Connor 3

2 Growing Up: Two Novels 43

3 Living in the World: People and Things in a Good man is hard to find 62

4 The Enduring Conflict: Parents and Children in Everything that Rises must converge 97

5 What Makes Her "Different": Flannery O'Connor and Southern Literature 131

Selected Bibliography 159

Notes 165

Index 173

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"I have read The World of Flannery O'Connor with admiration and profit. It is a work of rare critical acuteness, and shows an understanding of the mind of contemporary American fiction—which is as rare as it is penetrating. A most valuable book."
—Alfred Kazin

"The World of Flannery O'Connor is a brilliant book. Hendin . . . has delineated more clearly than anyone before her what is genuinely modern about Flannery O'Connor."
—Studies in Short Fiction

"A discerning and distinctive critical analysis of the authentic and conflicting voices of Flannery O'Connor that create the tension of her writing and reflect the contradictory aspects of her inner self and outer role in a life that ended in dread illness in 1964."
—The Booklist

Editorial Reviews

"I have read The World of Flannery O'Connor with admiration and profit. It is a work of rare critical acuteness, and shows an understanding of the mind of contemporary American fiction—which is as rare as it is penetrating. A most valuable book."
—Alfred Kazin

"The World of Flannery O'Connor is a brilliant book. Hendin . . . has delineated more clearly than anyone before her what is genuinely modern about Flannery O'Connor."
—Studies in Short Fiction

"A discerning and distinctive critical analysis of the authentic and conflicting voices of Flannery O'Connor that create the tension of her writing and reflect the contradictory aspects of her inner self and outer role in a life that ended in dread illness in 1964."
—The Booklist

From the Publisher