The Gospel According to Flannery O'Connor: Examining the Role of the Bible in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction

Jordan Cofer examines the influence of the Bible upon Flannery O'Connor's fiction. While there are many studies exploring how her Catholicism affected her fiction, this book argues that O'Connor is heavily influenced by the Bible itself. Specifically, it explicates the largely undocumented ways in which she used the Bible as source material for her work. It also shows that, rhetorically, many of O'Connor's stories (and/or characters) are based upon biblical models. Furthermore, Cofer explains how O'Connor's stories engage their biblical analogues in unusual, unexpected, and sometimes grotesque ways, as her stories manage to convey essentially the same message as their biblical counterparts. Throughout O'Connor's work there are significant biblical allusions which have been neglected or previously undiscovered. This book acknowledges her biblical source material so readers can understand the impact it had on her fiction. Cofer argues that readers can better appreciate her work by examining how her stories are often grounded in specific biblical texts, which she similarly distorts, exaggerates, and subverts, in order to shock and teach readers. Simply put, O'Connor doesn't merely reference these biblical stories, she rewrites them.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Chapter 1. Towards a New Approach to Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction Chapter 2. Wise Blood as a Primer for O’Connor’s Religious Vision Chapter 3. From Dishonor to Glory: Biblical Recapitulation in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Judgment Day” Chapter 4. The Terrible Speed of Mercy: Flannery O’Connor’s Backwoods Prophets Chapter 5. So The Last Shall Be First, and The First Last: Biblical Reversals in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Jordan Cofer is Associate Professor of English at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, USA.

Review :
[This book] sheds fresh light on Flannery O'Connor's characters as well as whetting the appetites of those new to them. Jordan Cofer’s book is the first to examine O’Connor’s work in direct connection with Biblical scriptures. Many other Christian readings of her fiction have appeared from the late 1960s forward, but Cofer’s is the first close textual analysis. His study, which helps clarify O’Connor’s use of the Bible, will be of assistance to students studying her work, professors who guide that study, and anyone interested in the work of the greatest Christian novelist of the 20th century. Flannery O’Connor read the Bible well, and Jordan Cofer skillfully demonstrates how she adapted scripture—often juggling several sets of allusions at once—to produce some of the greatest fiction of the twentieth century. Far from reductive, Cofer’s approach makes O’Connor’s fiction seem more subtle and original, more paradoxical, more upsetting. More than any previous interpreter of Flannery O'Connor, Jordan Cofer attends to the specifically scriptural quality of her fiction—her overt biblical references, her covert biblical allusions, her radical biblical reversals of human expectation, her subtle recasting of biblical characters and stories. Moses and Elijah, Job and Peter, Paul blinded and the Rich Young Ruler sent sorrowfully away: Cofer demonstrates how such biblical figures and events are given compelling new life in Flannery O'Connor's novels and stories.