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Flannery o'Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of Revelation by John D. Sykes (2007, Hardcover)

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About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherUniversity of Missouri Press

ISBN-100826217575

ISBN-139780826217578

eBay Product ID (ePID)60453909

Product Key Features

Number of Pages208 Pages

Publication NameFlannery O'connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of Revelation

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2007

SubjectAmerican / General, Christianity / Literature & the Arts

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism, Religion

AuthorJohn D. Sykes

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.9 in

Item Weight13 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceCollege Audience

LCCN2007-016711

Dewey Edition22

Grade FromCollege Freshman

Grade ToCollege Graduate Student

Dewey Decimal813/.54

SynopsisAccording 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., With his mastery of modernist technique and his depictions of characters obsessed with the past, Nobel laureate William Faulkner raised the bar for southern fiction writers. But the work of two later authors shows that the aesthetic of memory is not enough: Confederate thunder fades as they turn to an explicitly religious source of meaning. According to John 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. Sykes sets O'Connor and Percy against the background of the Southern Renaissance from which they emerged, showing not only how they shared a distinctly Christian notion of art that led them to see fiction as revelatory but also how their methods of revelation took them in different directions. Yet, despite their differences in strategy and emphasis, he argues that the two are united in their conception of the artist as "God's sharp-eyed witness," and he connects them with the philosophers and critics, both Christian and non-Christian, who had a meaningful influence on their work. Through sustained readings of key texts--particularly such O'Connor stories as "The Artificial Nigger" and "The Geranium" and Percy's novels Love in the Ruins and The Second Coming --Sykes focuses on the intertwined themes of revelation, sacrament, and community. He views their work in relation to the theological difficulties that they were not able to overcome concerning community. For both writers, the question of community is further complicated by the changing nature of the South as the Lost Cause and segregation lose their holds and a new form of prosperity arises. 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. Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and the Aesthetic of Revelation is theoretically sophisticated without being esoteric and is accessible to any reader with a serious interest in these writers, brimming with fresh insights about both that clarify their approaches to art and enrich our understanding of their work., With his mastery of modernist technique and his depictions of characters obsessed with the past, Nobel laureate William Faulkner raised the bar for southern fiction writers. But the work of two later authors shows that the aesthetic of memory is not enough: Confederate thunder fades into a comic echo as they turn to an explicitly religious source of meaning. According to John 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. Sykes sets O'Connor and Percy against the background of the Southern Renaissance from which they emerged, showing not only how they shared a distinctly Christian notion of art that led them to see fiction as revelatory but also how their methods of revelation took them in different directions. Yet, despite their differences in strategy and emphasis, he argues that the two are united in the conception of the artist as "God's sharp-eyed witness," and he connects them with the philosophers and critics, both Christian and non-Christian, who had a meaningful influence on their work. Through sustained readings of key texts--particularly such O'Connor stories as "The Artificial Nigger" and "The Geranium" and Percy's novels Love in the Ruins and The Second Coming--Sykes focuses on the intertwined themes of revelation, sacrament, and community. He views their work in relation to thetheological difficulties that they were not able to overcome concerning community. For both writers, the question of community is further complicated by the changing nature of the South as the Lost Cause and segregation lose their holds and a new form of prosperity arises. 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. Flannery O'Connor, Walker, Percy, and the Aesthetic of Revelation is theoretically sophisticated without being esoteric and is accessible to any reader with a serious interest in these writers, brimming with fresh insights about both that clarify their approaches to art and enrich our understanding of their work.

LC Classification NumberPS3565.C57Z88 2007