Narrating Knowledge in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction

A linguistic approach to the novels and short stories of Flannery O'Connor; In Narrating Knowledge in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction, Donald E. Hardy examines themes in Flannery O'Connor's fiction concerning the limitations of human knowledge. He argues that attending to O'Connor's stylistic strategies allows the best access to her views about knowledge in all its manifestations - spiritual, rational, and emotional - whether the knowledge is that of the narrator, the narratee, or the characters of her narratives. It also, he maintains, allows readers to appreciate the mysteries she sought to underscore. Surveying O'Connor's fiction, early as well as late, Hardy concludes that the writer's differentiation between grades of knowledge, along with the intimations she offered of what lies behind knowledge - of the ineffable behind the rational - finds only partial expression in the content of her narratives and in her narrative summings-up. For a thorough understanding it is necessary to turn to her employment of certain linguistic devices open to analysis. These include dependent clauses, for rendering presuppositions explicit; negations, for blocking suppositions; and participials descri