Flannery O'Connor: The Imagination of Extremity - Softcover

Asals, Frederick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0820308390 ISBN 13: 9780820308395

Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr, 1986

Synopsis

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 Violent Bear It Away and Everything That Rises Must Converge, O'Connor's novels and stories wrestle with extremes of faith and reason, acceptance and revolt; they arch between cool narrative and explosive action, between a sacramental vision and a primary intuition of reality.

About this title

About the Author:

FREDERICK ASALS is a professor of English at New College, University of Toronto.

Review:

Asals's study is an investigation of the dynamics of O'Connor's imagination, and as such it is one of the most complex, challenging, and intellectually exciting studies of her work yet to appear. . . . A superb and penetrating analysis. (Flannery O'Connor Bulletin)

To my taste, the most impressive book [of O'Connor criticism] published to date. . . . Asals is especially helpful because, unlike the horde of critics who expound a static deductive vision on O'Connor's part, he traces her growth toward the relative serenity of her later work. (New York Review of Books)

The best book yet written on Flannery O'Connor, not only scholarly, useful, and intelligent, but written with a clarity and grace rare in critical prose. It is an impressive achievement. (Modern Fiction Studies)

An impressive piece of scholarship, with an abundance of informative notes. Asals' assertions are invariably provocative, and the essentially severe view of O'Connor is a valuable corrective to the sentimentalized Christian humanist theory. (American Literature)

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0820308390
• ISBN 13: 9780820308395
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 232