You are here

FAU Collections » FAU Research Repository » FAU Theses and Dissertations

Expressions of the religious imagination in the work of Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor

Download pdf | Full Screen View

Date Issued:
1993
Summary:
Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor possess essentially religious imaginations. The character of their work is determined by the degree of similarity or difference between their beliefs and those generally held by their intended audiences. Austen, an orthodox Anglican in a fundamentally religious era, creates a fiction of restraint: gently satiric, ultimately comic in form and intent, directed to a reader who shares her vision of spiritual and moral order revealed through social structure. O'Connor, a Catholic in an age of unbelief, writes a fiction of extremity, characterized by fierce satire, violence, grotesquerie, and the juxtaposition of comic characters and situations with tragic form and meaning, directed to an unbelieving reader whom she wishes to "shock" into a new awareness of the sacred. A comparison of the work of Austen and O'Connor in this context leads to a renewed appreciation of the interdependence of imagination and reality in determining the distinctive qualities of a writer's oeuvre.
Title: Expressions of the religious imagination in the work of Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor.
233 views
161 downloads
Name(s): Payne, Pamela Wood.
Florida Atlantic University, Degree grantor
Pearce, Howard D., Thesis advisor
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 1993
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 70 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: Jane Austen and Flannery O'Connor possess essentially religious imaginations. The character of their work is determined by the degree of similarity or difference between their beliefs and those generally held by their intended audiences. Austen, an orthodox Anglican in a fundamentally religious era, creates a fiction of restraint: gently satiric, ultimately comic in form and intent, directed to a reader who shares her vision of spiritual and moral order revealed through social structure. O'Connor, a Catholic in an age of unbelief, writes a fiction of extremity, characterized by fierce satire, violence, grotesquerie, and the juxtaposition of comic characters and situations with tragic form and meaning, directed to an unbelieving reader whom she wishes to "shock" into a new awareness of the sacred. A comparison of the work of Austen and O'Connor in this context leads to a renewed appreciation of the interdependence of imagination and reality in determining the distinctive qualities of a writer's oeuvre.
Identifier: 14889 (digitool), FADT14889 (IID), fau:11674 (fedora)
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1993.
Subject(s): O'Connor, Flannery--Criticism and interpretation
Austen, Jane,--1775-1817--Criticism and interpretation
Imagination--Religious aspects
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14889
Sublocation: Digital Library
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.