According to Sykes, the fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy provides occasions for divine revelation. He traces their work from its common roots in midcentury southern and Catholic intellectual life to show how the two adopted different theological emphases and rhetorical strategies--O'Connor building to climactic images, Percy striving for dialogue with the reader--as a means of uncovering the sacramental foundation of the created order. Through sustained readings of key texts, Sykes focuses on the intertwined ...
Read More
According to Sykes, the fiction of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy provides occasions for divine revelation. He traces their work from its common roots in midcentury southern and Catholic intellectual life to show how the two adopted different theological emphases and rhetorical strategies--O'Connor building to climactic images, Percy striving for dialogue with the reader--as a means of uncovering the sacramental foundation of the created order. Through sustained readings of key texts, Sykes focuses on the intertwined themes of revelation, sacrament, and community. By disclosing how O'Connor and Percy made aesthetic choices based on their Catholicism and their belief that fiction by its very nature is revelatory, Sykes demonstrates that their work cannot be seen as merely a continuation of the historical aesthetic that dominated southern literature for so long.
Read Less
Add this copy of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of to cart. $45.00, new condition, Sold by Eighth Day Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Wichita, KS, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by University of Missouri Press.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. For generations, the fabric of the American South has given its writers a complex history and cultural setting within which they have wrestled with questions of class, religion, community, and a sense of place. Writers such as William Faulkner, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren were known for an 'aesthetic of memory' that emphasized historical consciousness as a way to overcome the loss of traditional, communal meaning. A generation or so later, Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy-in decidedly different fashion-found their predecessors had failed to supply a positive alternative to the tragically flawed edifices of the past. Their shift to an 'aesthetic of revelation' explored theophany as a means of shedding light on the human predicament as well as recovering the sacramental meaning of life on earth. For O'Connor, this meant drawing 'large and startling figures' (Collected Works, Flannery O'Connor) that might reveal mysteries invisible to the modern sensibility. Percy sought dialogue, a sort of 'conspiratorial bond' (John Sykes) that draws the reader into the quest of the central character. O'Connor surprises, even frightens us with an image; Percy seeks his revelation off the page, posing it as a question the reader will continue to ask after the book is laid aside. Through sustained readings of key texts, John Sykes reveals how their aesthetic choices share a distinctly Christian notion of art: 'a special kind of making with its own restorative goodness' that joins God in the salvation of humanity. 192 pp.
Add this copy of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy and the Aesthetic of to cart. $50.59, new condition, Sold by indoo rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Avenel, NJ, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by University of Missouri Press.
Add this copy of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of to cart. $79.65, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by University of Missouri.
Add this copy of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of to cart. $117.06, new condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2007 by University of Missouri.
