Return to Good and Evil Flannery O'Connor's Response to Nihilism

by Edmondson, Henry T., III; Montgomery, Marion

• ISBN13: 9780739111055
• ISBN10: 0739111051
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-04-05
• Publisher: Lexington Books

Summary

Return to Good and Evil: Flannery O'Connor's Response to Nihilism is a superb guide to the works of Flannery O'Connor; and like O'Connor's stories themselves, it is captivating, provocative, and unsettling. Edmondson organizes O'Connor's thought around her principal concern, that with the nihilistic claim that God is dead the traditional signposts of good and evil have been lost. Edmondson's book demonstrates that the combination of O'Connor's artistic brilliance and philosophical genius provide the best response to the nihilistic despair of the modern world--a return to good and evil through humility and grace.

Author Biography

Henry T. Edmondson III is Professor of Government at Georgia College & State University. He is editor of The Moral of the Story. Literature and Public Ethics

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Abbreviations	xvii
1 Faith, Philosophy, and Fiction	1	(18)
2 O'Connor contra Nihilism	19	(16)
3 Modern Man as A4algre Ltd in Wise Blood	35	(20)
4 Wise Blood and the Difficult Return to God	55	(18)
5 "Good Country People" and the Seduction of Nihilism	73	(18)
6 The Nature of Evil in "The Lame Shall Enter First"	91	(16)
7 Social Change in "The Enduring Chill"	107	(20)
8 Modernity versus Mystery in "A View of the Woods"	127	(18)
9 Redemption and the Ennoblement of Suffering in "The Artificial Nigger"	145	(20)
10 Grace, the Devil, and the Prophet	165	(16)
Endnotes	181	(18)
Index	199	(4)
About the Author	203