The Incarnational Art of Flannery O'Connor: The O'Connor Centenary (1925-2025)

3 credits · Divinity School

Literary scholars contend that no other modern American writer of the twentieth century has constructed a fictional world so energetically and forthrightly charged by religious investigation as Flannery O'Connor has created. Her canon has established the standards for how serious writers may address the Mystery of God's salvific actions without compromising the compositional tenets of belletristic literature. As a "literary theologian," O'Connor demonstrated that religion, far from being an impediment to art, may serve as the vital center of the artist's imagination. Participants in this course will engage in a rigorous, objective, and unsentimental investigation of the themes that comprise O'Connor's canon. We shall read her two novels, two collections of short stories, essays, and correspondence, and our discourse will be governed by the recurring question: "What universal properties from the human drama of existence has Flannery O'Connor incarnated in language and invited us to examine?" [3] Ms. Pierce and Mr. Judge