Leiden University Student Repository

Sep, Milan (2017)

“A Deep Black Wordless Conviction”: Grotesque Evangelicals in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

Bachelor thesis | Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

One might argue that the Christian themes in Flannery O'Connor's fiction were prevalent not because she wished to produce religious texts about redemption, but rather because Christianity and the church played a great role in her life and in the South in general. In fact, she claimed that “the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ- haunted” (861). This thesis argues that Wise Blood is not a religious novel nor does it have a religious message. Instead, O’Connor deploys the gothic, or more specifically its southern variety of the grotesque, to criticise Evangelical Protestantism for obscuring and sustaining the social injustices in the South.

Gothic

Grotesque

O'Connor

American South

Racism

Author

Sep, Milan

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Supervisors

Kardux, J.C.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en