2018-2019 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
    Mar 29, 2024  
2018-2019 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Add to My Catalog (opens a new window)

ENG 385 - Living Traditions: Flannery O’Connor

(3)
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.

Prerequisite(s): ENG 200.

Offered Fall 2019 and Fall 2022.

Living Traditions courses illuminate ways in which writers, writing from within their social milieu and in a given form or mode, use art to explore vital questions of human existence. Starting with a representative figure, these courses explore that author’s historical and literary influences as well as the contemporary legacy, examining ways in which literary artists and their ideas continue to transform culture.



Add to My Catalog (opens a new window)