Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists

by Ralph C. Wood

Book Overview

Focusing on specific theological issues in the work of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, John Updike, and Peter De Vries, The Comedy of Redemption boldly unites Christian faith in dialogue with comic fiction. Ralph C. Wood demonstrates that all four writers are comic artists in the theological sense of the term, although their fiction echoes the laughter of the Gospel in radically different ways.

Wood explores tragedy and comedy in...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0268007861
• ISBN13: 9780268007867
• Release Date: September 1988
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Length: 326 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

A Joy from cover to cover

One of the English speaking world's best essayists gives unique and insightful reflections on four of the greatest American novelists. In the process he shows that real comedy is a Christian virtue. Only Christians have the basis for celebrating the comedic nature of creation. There are good reasons why this masterpiece has gone through multiple printings. It is as if Ralph Wood was channeling G K Chesterton, but with sharper theological powers. A delight from beginning to end, and a devasting rebuke to those Christians, Left and Right, with humorless souls.