Literature, region, religion: Flannery O’Connor’s essays
Flannery O’Connor’s Essays
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/LC.2025.002Słowa kluczowe
literary regionalism, Catholic literature, literature of the US South, grotesque, raceAbstrakt
The article discusses the main themes of Flannery O’Connor’s essays collected in her posthumously published book Mystery and Manners (1969). The two eponymous words suggest a kind of dichotomy, but in essence they signify the inseparability of the social and the religious in O’Connor’s writing. According to the writer, manners shape attitudes which in turn decide about the quality of collective life. The realm of manners, governed by logic, does not determine human life in its entirety because it possesses a hardly definable additional dimension, encapsulated in the term “mystery.” O’Connor ascribes a religious meaning to it, but in her fiction it manifests itself through happenings that confront her characters with phenomena that transcend their familiar experiential territory. The notions of manners and mystery correspond with the literary categories of regional writing and Catholic writing, which O’Connor problematizes in her essays.
Bibliografia
Armstrong, Julie 2001–2002. “Blinded by Whiteness: Revisiting Flannery O’Connor and Race.” Flannery O’Connor Review 1: 77–86.
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Gordon, Mary 2003–2004. “Is Flannery O’Connor a Catholic?” Flannery O’Connor Review 2: 1–3.
Howe, Irving 1959. “Mass Society and Post-Modern Fiction.” Partisan Review XXVI: 420–436.
Kirk, Connie Ann 2008. Critical Companion to Flannery O’Connor. New York: Facts on File.
Morrison, Toni 1992. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
O’Connor, Flannery 2014. Mystery and Manners. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (eds.). London: Faber and Faber.
Orvell, Miles D. 2004. “Flannery O’Connor.” In: Douglas Robillard, Jr. (ed.). The Critical Response to Flannery O’Connor. Westport-London: Praeger.
Prown, Katherine Hemple 2001. Revising Flannery O’Connor: Southern Literary Culture and the Problem of Female Authorship. Charlottesville-London: University Press of Virginia.
Roth, Philip 2001. Reading Myself and Others. New York: Vintage Books.
Wood, Ralph C. 1996–1997. “‘Obedience to the Unforceable’: Mystery, Manners, and Masks in ‘Judgment Day.’” The Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 25: 153–174.
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Prawa autorskie (c) 2025 Marek Paryż
Utwór dostępny jest na licencji Creative Commons Uznanie autorstwa – Bez utworów zależnych 4.0 Międzynarodowe.
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