FROM FLAMES TO SILENCE: The Bible in Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away
Bible and literature; American literature; comparative literature; Flannery O'Connor.
This thesis investigates the influence of literary aspects of the biblical text, such as, imagery, stylistics and narrative found in the work of American writer Flannery O'Connor, mainly in her last novel The Violent Bear It Away (2007). Departing from concepts developed by Canadian literary theorist Northrop Frye — in Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (2006) and The Great Code: the Bible and Literature (2004) —, as well as from some contributions by American critic Robert Alter (in The Art of Biblical Narrative (2007) and Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible (2010)), we seek to demonstrate how the author’s novel converses with artistic procedures of the Bible, such as, typology and biblical archetypes, as well as its central myth, in the creation of a novel meticulously correlated to the biblical text. In our trajectory, we present the fictionist's ability in dealing with the biblical impetus in her composition.