American Catholic Fiction: Flannery O'Connor's Hillbilly Thomism
This new series, led by Dr. Jennifer Frey (associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina and host of the literature, philosophy, and theology podcast, Sacred and Profane… Continue reading American Catholic Fiction: Flannery O’Connor’s Hillbilly Thomism
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This new series, led by Dr. Jennifer Frey (associate professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina and host of the literature, philosophy, and theology podcast, Sacred and Profane Love), explores the fiction of mid twentieth century Catholic writer, Flannery O’Connor.

“Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological.” Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor is simultaneously one of the most celebrated and least understood twentieth century American fiction writers. In her short career (she died of Lupus at age 39), she published two novels and thirty two short stories. Her first novel, Wise Blood, was published in 1952 when she was just 27 years old. Critical reactions were mixed–far too many critics couldn’t understand why her characters were so darkly comic and outlandish, or why her works contained so much shocking violence. The publication of “A Good Man is Hard to Find” in 1953, however, secured her status as one of the greatest writers of her generation–it was immediately compared to the best of Hemingway and Melville.

O’Connor once claimed that she read a lot of theology because it made her writing bolder. She was often described by literary critics as a hillbilly nihilist, but she protested that she was in fact a hillbilly Thomist, and we know that she had the habit of reading Aquinas every evening before bed. In this six part series, we will try to understand the theological vision that informs O’Connor’s fiction, and in particular how she understood the action of grace unfolding in her stories.

O’Connor’s conception of grace often shocks and unsettles Christians. She did not think of grace as a warm blanket; she knew that it could shock, disrupt, and displace. It is central to her vision of grace that it works to pierce the veil of perception, to help us to see the world as it really is, and to force us–sometimes quite violently–to confront reality, most especially the unpleasant reality of sin and our need for some kind of redemption.

Topics we will discuss throughout the series include O’Connor’s understanding of: grace and the will, the relation between grace and nature, the grotesque in southern fiction, the “Christ Haunted South”, the aim and purpose of fiction, the relationship between art and truth, the place of the Roman Catholic in the Protestant South, and the regional writer.

This salon has 6 series, running on the 1st Sunday of every month, at 7:00- 10:00 pm EST

Dates are: February 6th, March 6th, April 18th, May 1st, June 12th, and July 3rd

Depending on availability, the host might release tickets for individual salons too

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