Aberrations, Instabilities and Mythoclasm in the Tales of Flannery O'Connor

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure concepts introduced by contemporary critics of the South, such as “Southern aberrations,” “Southern self-fashioning,” “instabilities,” and “mythoclasm,” this paper analyses Flannery O’Connor’s tales and their peculiar role within the history of Southern writing. The author argues that despite O’Connor’s alleged conservatism, her tales undermine traditional categories related to the South and anticipate later tendencies. Thus, although O’Connor’s fiction incorporates the most distinctive elements of traditional Southern literature —humor, the grotesque, violence, religion, race and racism— and some of her views may evoke the white and male aesthetic of the Fugitives/Agrarians, the iconoclastic treatment of these elements prefigures the revisionist impulse of present-day Southern writing, suggesting the turn of Southern literature to parody and postsouthernness.