원문정보
Carnival-grotesque Narrative in O’Connor’s Wise Blood
초록
영어
This article aims to study the narrative characteristics of Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood in the Bakhtinian perspective. She believed that the Church was shepherding its congregation wrongly by neglecting its duties for them in mannerism, and so that it must better guide better many Christians making big mistakes by reforming its system. As a convinced catholic, O’Connor thought such reform came from a change in an individual’s perception, and tried to enable her readers to recognize what the errors of the Church are like. For this reason, she selects some imageries representing something noble, spiritual, transcendent and divine, and combines them with imageries expressing something low, physical, animalistic or worldly, which makes her readers rethink what the problems of Christian values and hierarchies are, and also lets them reflect on what their own mistakes are as Christians. In Bakhtin’s point of view, this is reflected in the concept of ‘degradation,’ common in the Rabelaisian carnival-grotesque narrative. As a result, this mixture of oppositional and heterogeneous imageries creates a more grotesque and comic narrative. Especially, O’Connor’s stylistic parody, which has a strong background of public culture, increases both her novels’ comicality and grotesqueness. Actually, she makes this novel a more popular and festive by her parody of common ideologies the readers know well. In conclusion, O’Connor succeeds in drawing her readers’ more active response as well as mitigating their negative response originating from the criticism of Christianity. In this respect, her grotesque narrative is carnivalesque.
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Abstract