Flannery O'Connor: The Imagination of Extremity

by Frederick Aasals and Frederick Asals

Book Overview

This study explores the dualities that inform the entire body of Flannery O'Connor's fiction. From the almost unredeemable world of Wise Blood to the climactic moments of revelation that infuse The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820308390
• ISBN13: 9780820308395
• Release Date: January 1986
• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Descriptive review from from Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism

Asals submits that his "overriding concern...is to plot out the most significant dimensions of the imagination" seen in Flannery O'Connor's works, and "to focus on her fascination with tensions and polarities." Observes her use of startling and violent dualistic images and her debt to previous writers of the grotesque. Notes the unreconciled extremes evident in her fiction and outlines how and why these elements work so effectively. Discusses in the first chapter sources and influences for some of her early stories, including: "The Geranium," "The Turkey," "The Crop," "The Barber," "Wildcat" and "The Train." The following three chapters focus on O'Connor's artistic practice in her more mature stories: "from close attention to texture...to examination of a crucial and recurrent pattern of character and action...to exploration of some characteristic habits of mind and the fictional strategies that embody them." Asals illustrates his points by drawing upon a variety of stories, then focuses on one story in particular for each chapter. In the fifth chapter Asals discusses O'Connor's novel "The Violent Bear It Away," "both as a culmination of trends in her fiction after "Wise Blood" [novel] and as a significant achievement in its own right." Outlines, in the final chapter, religious dimensions of O'Connor's imagination, focusing on her aesthetic discrimination. Maintains that inferences related to her theology "need to be determined within the larger imaginative structure of her fiction, not outside of it." Asals is dismayed to note that studies -- including his own -- seem to miss "the incorrigible sense of comedy that animates" her creations. Finds O'Connor's fiction to reflect "a world of pain dominated by the crucified, not the resurrected Christ, given over to sharp suffering and sudden death." Adapted by R. Neil Scott from: Scott, R. Neil. FLANNERY O'CONNOR: AN ANNOTATED REFERENCE GUIDE TO CRITICISM. Milledgeville, GA: Timberlane Books, 2002. To order go to: www.TimberlaneBooks.com

The best book on O'Connor ever written!!!

I have written my MA thesis on O'Connor, and I can tell you that you will not find a better book that this one for teaching or research. Asals exploration of O'Connor is so extensive, clear and perceptive it discourages further efforts.