ENG 3XX - Living Traditions: ENG 385 - Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, she wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters. Her writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith and frequently examined questions of morality and ethics. Her posthumously-compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of enduring praise ~ from Wikipedia

Although she died young and at the height of her visionary talent, Flannery O’Connor left behind a trove of stories and prose which helped define modern fiction and set a standard for articulating the means by which faith can inform art. A lifelong native of Georgia, her novels and short stories are inflected by a fearless confrontation with the idea of the South, with the complexities of religious conviction entwined with a history of racial violence. From her position within the Southern gothic tradition that includes Faulkner, we will examine the influences-from Christian mystics and philosophers to earlier writers of fiction and romance-that inform her storytelling. We will look also at the influence she continues to exert on contemporary writers as varied as Shusako Endo, Joyce Carol Oates, and Raymond Carver, all of whom exemplify her sensibility for graphic naturalism in service to the unseen.