Paper Title
Pushing Her Own Limits
Panel
Literary Interventions I
Location
Room 220, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
Start Date
31-3-2016 3:30 PM
End Date
31-3-2016 4:45 PM
Abstract
In her essay, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction” (1960), Flannery O’Connor wrote, speaking of a writer who believes in God, “His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don’t understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than in probability.” What I feel that O’Connor was arguing was for the presence of religious identity in the world of fiction, which has always been controversial and viewed as problematic by the literary and academic communities due to its psychological interiority and borderline “preachy” and “didactic” quality. Coming from Salt Lake City, Utah, and from a rich pioneer heritage of members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon Church), I have always struggled with understanding religious identity alongside gender and race. In this essay, I will examine writers like O’Connor, Melinda Moustakis, Dorothy Solomon, and others who explore the complexity of a religious identity inside a patriarchal system.
Pushing Her Own Limits
Room 220, DiGiorgio Campus Center (DiGs)
In her essay, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction” (1960), Flannery O’Connor wrote, speaking of a writer who believes in God, “His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery, because for this kind of writer, the meaning of a story does not begin except at a depth where adequate motivation and adequate psychology and the various determinations have been exhausted. Such a writer will be interested in what we don’t understand rather than in what we do. He will be interested in possibility rather than in probability.” What I feel that O’Connor was arguing was for the presence of religious identity in the world of fiction, which has always been controversial and viewed as problematic by the literary and academic communities due to its psychological interiority and borderline “preachy” and “didactic” quality. Coming from Salt Lake City, Utah, and from a rich pioneer heritage of members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS/Mormon Church), I have always struggled with understanding religious identity alongside gender and race. In this essay, I will examine writers like O’Connor, Melinda Moustakis, Dorothy Solomon, and others who explore the complexity of a religious identity inside a patriarchal system.
Comments
Kate Kimball
PhD Candidate
English Dept, Florida State University
kk13h@my.fsu.edu