Literary Theories in Praxis analyzes the ways in which critical theories are transformed into literary criticism and methodology. To demonstrate the application of this analysis, critical writings of Roland Barthes, Harold Bloom, Cleanth Brooks, Jacques Derrida, Northrop Frye, Norman Holland, Barbara Johnson, Jacques Lacan, Adrienne Rich, and Robert Scholes are examined in terms of the primary critical stance each author employs—New Critical, phenomenological, archetypal, structuralist/semiotic, sociological, psychoanalytic, reader-response, deconstructionist, or humanist. The book is divided into nine sections, each with a prefatory essay explaining the critical stance taken in the selections that follow and describing how theory becomes literary criticism. In a headnote to each selection, Staton analyzes how the critic applies his or her critical methodology to the subject literary work. Shirley F. Staton's introduction sketches the overall philosophical positions and relationships among the various critical modes.

Contains twenty critical essays that explore themes of the grotesque in various works, such as Voltaire's "Candide," Shelley's "Frankenstein," "Gogol's "The Overcoat," and Kafka's "The Metamorphosis."

Flannery O'Connor believed that fiction must try to achieve something on the order of what St. Gregory wrote about Scripture: every time it presents a fact, it must also disclose a mystery. O'Connor's artistic vision was located squarely in her Catholic faith, yet she realized that to view life only through the eyes of the Church was to ignore a large part of existence. In her fiction, therefore, she explored a wider world, employing voices that challenged conceptions of both self and faith, ultimately enlarging and deepening both. In The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor, Robert Brinkmeyer presents an innovative study of O'Connor's fiction by exploring the dialogic forces at work in her writing.Drawing on the insights of literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin, Brinkmeyer offers an explanation for the great depth and power of O'Connor's work, paying particular attention to the ways her art and audience bear upon her regnant Catholic vision. This pressure and resistance, Brinkmeyer writes, free O'Connor's vision from the limits of its perspective, opening it to growth and understanding. After a thorough discussion of the ways in which O'Connor's Catholic and southern heritage helped to form her artistic vision, Brinkmeyer shows how dialogic encounters are at work in O'Connor's interaction with her largely fundamentalist narrators, the stories they tell, and her readers. He focuses on several of her stories as well as her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. As the first analysis of the dialogical dynamics of O'Connor's art and vision, this study offers an original approach to understanding O'Connor. But the significance of the book extends far beyond O'Connor scholarship, for Brinkmeyer presents a critical method that has value for exploring other writers, particularly other modern Catholic writers.

Presents a brief biography of Flannery O'Connor, thematic and structural analysis of her works, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.

The authors focus on the religious and theological significance of grotesque imagery in art and literature, exploring the religious meaning of the grotesque and its importance as a subject for theological inquiry.

An essential book for critical study of the works of Flannery O'Connor. "The best study of one of the best writers"--Robert Fitzgerald

This is a reading of physical obsession in O'Connor through linguistic and literary techniques. central struggle between spirit and matter in O'Connor through a close quantitative examination of the interactions of grammatical voice and physical bodies in her texts. Bridging literary theory and linguistics, Hardy demonstrates that the many constructions in which the body parts of O'Connor's characters are foregrounded, either as subjects or objects, are grammatical manipulations of semantic variations on what linguists deem the middle voice - roughly indicating that the subject is acting upon himself or herself. productive approach to understanding O'Connor's use of the body and its parts in her explorations of the sacramental and the grotesque. Linguistic analysis of grammatical middle voice is coupled with quantitative analysis of body-part words and the collocations in which they appear to present a new point of entrance to understanding O'Connor's stylistic manipulations of the body as central to the rift between spirit and matter. Through this method of reading O'Connor, Hardy makes a valuable contribution to the growing body of work that is introducing linguistic terminology and concepts into literary studies.

"The study begins with an exploration of O'Connor's Southern milieu, a survey of relevant scholarship (particularly feminist theory), and a clarification of essential terms and concepts surrounding ritual. The remaining chapters are then dedicated to the six short stories, each of which depicts certain ritual patterns and archetypal models. In this way, the study furnishes a prototype that can be applied to O'Connor's entire oeuvre." "Ritual Performance in the Fiction of Flannery O'Connor is an excellent resource for teachers and students of American literature, Southern Studies, feminist theory, and ritual studies. Because it is story-centered rather than theory-driven, it will appeal to those who are looking for ways to read (and teach) O'Connor's astonishing stories more deeply."--BOOK JACKET.

"To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures."--Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and MannersDrowning in a river, the violent murder of a grandmother in the backwoods of Georgia, and the trans-genital display of a freak at a carnival show are all shocking literary devices used by Flannery O'Connnor, one of American literature's best pulp fiction writers. More than thirty-five years after her death, readers are still shocked by O'Connor's grotesque images. Dr. Jill Baumgaertner concentrates on O'Connor's use of emblems, those moments of sudden and horrid illumination when the sacred and the profane merge as sacrament. This readable volume is ideal for college students, O'Connor scholars, or those wishing to better understand southern gothic fiction.