The Incarnational Art of Flannery O'ConnorThe Incarnational Art of Flannery O'Connor argues that O'Connor designed a unique asthetic to defy the Gnostic dualisms that characterize American intellectual and spiritual life. Focusing on stories with artist figures, objets d'art, child protagonists, and embodied images, Lake describes how O'Connor's fiction actively resisted romantic theories of the imagination and religious life by highlighting the epistemological necessity of the body. Ultimately O'Connor challenges the romantic and modern notion of the artist as a fire-stealing Prometheus and replaces it with a notion of the artist as a locally committed craftsman. Drawing upon M. M. Bakhtin's early essays in Art and Answerability and Toward a Philosophy of the Act, Lake illustrates O'Connor's conviction that art deliberately assigns the highest value of transcendental beauty to those beings least valued by the modern world, and challenges us to do the same. The book culminates with an original reading of Parker's Back that shows how in art, as in life, true knowledge comes to us through our own grotesque bodies and those of others. Unafraid of the mystery of being human, art can be the place where we encounter anew the world as more than what the intellect can unravel. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 14 | |
Wise Blood and the Poison of the Modern World | 55 |
Body Matters Boys without Mothers | 91 |
Body Matters Good Country People and A Temple of the Holy Ghost | 118 |
Transcending the Transcendentalists Bishop as Beauty in The Violent Bear It Away | 141 |
The Artist at Home | 179 |
Mary Anns Face and Parkers Back The Grotesque Body Under Construction | 208 |
Epilogue | 240 |
Bibliography | 245 |
Index | 253 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstract aesthetic Allen Tate Aquinas argues Art and Answerability artist Asbury Asbury's Bakhtin baptism beauty Bishop Brinkmeyer Bruce Gentry C. S. Lewis Cartesian Catholic characters child Christ Christian church critics death Descartes displaced divine embodied Enoch Essays Etienne Gilson everything explains eyes face feminist Flannery O'Connor flesh Georgia Press Gilson Gnostic God's grotesque body Harold Bloom Harpham Haze Haze's Holy Ghost human Ibid idea imagination incarnational art insists intellectual Jacques Maritain Jesus Joy/Hulga living look Lucynell M. M. Bakhtin Maritain Mary Ann medieval mind mother mystery narrator Nelson novel novelist O'Connor wrote O'Connor's fiction Parker Parker's Back philosophical physical primitive Rayber readers reality redemption Religion reveals sacramental Sarah Ruth sense Sheppard Shiftlet Shortley soul Southern spiritual story Tarwater Tarwater's tattoo tell things Tresmontant truth University of Georgia University Press Vadim Liapunov Violent Bear vision wants Wise Blood woman words writes York
Popular passages
Page 187 - O sages standing in God's holy fire As in the gold mosaic of a wall, Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre, And be the singing-masters of my soul. 20 Consume my heart away; sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is; and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.
Page 87 - THAT which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life ; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us...
Page 73 - For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
Page 61 - And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things.
Page 28 - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh. and dwelt among us.
Page 161 - And I knew Him not; but He who sent me to baptize with water, said to me: He upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, He it is that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.
Page 73 - God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence.
Page 66 - Know ye not, that your bodies are the members of Christ ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.
Page 229 - I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?
References to this book
The Body in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction: Computational Technique and ... Donald E. Hardy Limited preview - 2007 |