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"The voice of one crying in the wilderness": T. S. Eliot and Flannery O'Connor
Abstract
T. S. Eliot and Flannery O'Connor claim an important place in twentieth-century literature. Living in a "post-Christian" age, Eliot and O'Connor vehemently fought against the ethos of their time, especially the Nietzeschean "free spirit" Freudianism, moral relativism, and secular humanism. Preoccupied with problems of sin and grace, they attacked through their works the spiritual emptiness, sterility, and apathy of modern humanity. To them alienation was not a political, economic, or social issue but a theological one. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine Eliot and O'Connor as modern Christian artists, critics, and thinkers. Each main chapter is devoted to a specific area regarding the two writers. Chapter Two, "The Intellectual and Religious Backgrounds", explores various influences that helped shape the philosophies and aesthetics of Eliot and O'Connor. Chapter Three, "The Ideas of a Christian Writer," investigates how Eliot and O'Connor formulated their literary theory by combining religious doctrine and literary practice. Chapter Four, "The Ideas of a Christian Society," examines and critiques the two writers' social philosophies grounded in aristocratic and theocratic ideals. Chapter Five, "From Alienation to Reconciliation: The Ideas of Christian Redemption," compares and contrasts the two writers' conceptions of Christian salvation. The remaining two chapters, "The Use of the Grotesque" and "The Use of Other Aesthetics: Biblical Imagery," focus on the two writers' theological use of grotesque and biblical images, respectively. Through an historical-biographical approach, this study explores their literary theory, social philosophy, and theology. Although Eliot and O'Connor as literary critics were avowedly formalistic and ontological, they were also moral-philosophical in their emphasis on the theological basis of literature. As social thinkers, they are strikingly similar in their denunciation of many atheistic ideologies, in their dislike of Protestantism, in their advocacy of unified culture, and in their approval of coercion for conversion to Christ. Finally, Eliot's work expresses a Christian vision mostly influenced by the Incarnation and redemption, while O'Connor's work emphasizes damnation and judgment.
Subject Area
Literature|American literature|British and Irish literature
Recommended Citation
Han, Jae-Nam, ""The voice of one crying in the wilderness": T. S. Eliot and Flannery O'Connor" (1998). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9908472.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9908472