Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor / edited by Alison Arant and Jordan Cofer ; afterword by Marshall Bruce Gentry.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Arant, Alison, editor.

Cofer, Jordan, editor.

Gentry, Marshall Bruce, writer of afterword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

O'Connor, Flannery--Criticism and interpretation.

O'Connor, Flannery.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Essays.

Physical Description:

x, 263 pages : black and white illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2020.

Summary:

"The National Endowment for the Humanities has funded two Summer Institutes titled "Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor," which invited scholars to rethink approaches to Flannery O'Connor's work. Drawing largely on research that started as part of the 2014 NEH Institute, this collection shares its title and its mission. Featuring fourteen new essays, Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor disrupts a few commonplace assumptions of O'Connor studies while also circling back to some old questions that are due for new attention. The volume opens with "New Methodologies," which features theoretical approaches not typically associated with O'Connor's fiction in order to gain new insights into her work. The second section, "New Contexts," stretches expectations on literary genre, on popular archetypes in her stories, and on how we should interpret her work. The third section, lovingly called "Strange Bedfellows," puts O'Connor in dialogue with overlooked or neglected conversation partners, while the final section, "O'Connor's Legacy," reconsiders her personal views on creative writing and her wishes regarding the handling of her estate upon death. With these final essays, the collection comes full circle, attesting to the hazards that come from overly relying on O'Connor's interpretation of her own work but also from ignoring her views and desires. Through these reconsiderations, some of which draw on previously unpublished archival material, the collection attests to and promotes the vitality of scholarship on Flannery O'Connor"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Recovering Interpretative Possibilities in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor: An Introduction / Jordan Cofer

pt. 1 NEW METHODOLOGIES

Feather Method: Rereading O'Connor in the Age of the Object / Gina Caison

"God Made Me Thisaway": Crip-queer Perspectives on Flannery O'Connor / Bruce Henderson

The "Failure of ... Compassion": Problematic Redemption and the Need for Praxis in "The Lame Shall Enter First" and "The Comforts of Home" / Alicia Matheny Beeson

"The Words to Say It": Using Flannery O'Connor to Reconsider Lacan / Doreen Fowler

pt. 2 NEW CONTEXTS

Flannery O'Connor's Gothic Science Fiction / Doug Davis

The Trouble with "Innerleckchuls": Flannery O'Connor, Anti-Intellectualism, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop / Jordan Cofer

Country People: Depictions of Farm Women in Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction / Monica Carol Miller

pt. 3 STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

Mystery and Myth: Friedrich Nietzsche, Flannery O'Connor, and the Limiting Power of Certainty / William Murray

Flannery O'Connor and the Fascist Business: Plurality and the Possibility of Community / Alison Staudinger

"Herself but Black": Richard Wright, Flannery O'Connor, and the "Near Enemy" of Civil Rights / Rachel Watson

Inscrutable Zoot Suiters and Civil Rights Ambivalence in Flannery O'Connor and Toni Morrison / Alison Arant

Silence, Scalpels, and Loupes: Reconsidering O'Connor as Sylvia Plath's Contemporary / Lindsey Alexander

pt. 4 O'CONNOR'S LEGACY

Saint Flannery, Approximately: O'Connor and the Dogma of Creative Writing / Eric Bennett

Flannery O'Connor's Real Estate: Farming Intellectual Property / Carol Loeb Shloss.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor.

ISBN:

1496831802

9781496831804

9781496831798

1496831799

OCLC:

1154102892