Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Love - Softcover

Giannone, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0823219119 ISBN 13: 9780823219117

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 1999

Synopsis

Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Love interprets O'Connor's perplexing fiction on its own terms. By stepping back from prevailing controversies, this seminal study takes the pleasure of turning to the short stories and novels themselves and forming an impression of them while seeking the answers to such questions as they necessarily suggest themselves. This goal inevitably entails a consideration of the hardness and violence that are the hallmark of O'Connor's genius. That severity for Giannone is inseparable from O'Connor's recounting, in her words, "the action of grace." God's bounty can leave its beneficiaries with some very real handicaps. Grace in this fiction can make the blood run cold; it can do real injury to the body; and it can annihilate.

These devastations paradoxically prepare the characters to receive and give compassion. In its numerous and disturbing forms, the coupling of violence and hardship with divine favor marks the mature nature of O'Connor's Christianity. Suffering is found at heart of love and is its hidden face, agonized and abandoned. This is a love that is an anomaly and an enigma, for the wracked human body holds the glimmer of good omen. Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Love traces the evolution of these gaping wounds of love to show how they present the same challenge to her readers as to her characters, all of whom must learn that we are worth what our love is worth.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard Giannone is Professor Emeritus at Fordham University. He is the author of four books, including Flannery O’Connor: Hermit Novelist.

Review:

Giannone's insightful study, written in clear and elegant prose, would be useful to the general reader of O'Connor as well as to the scholar. (―Choice)

About this edition

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0823219119
• ISBN 13: 9780823219117
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 268