Modernity and the Changing American South: Alienation in a Selection of Fiction by Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty

• Thesis title in Czech: Modernita a měnící se americký jih: odcizení ve výběru literatury Flannery O’Connor a Eudora Welty
• Thesis title in English: Modernity and the Changing American South: Alienation in a Selection of Fiction by Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty
• Key words: Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, americky jih, modernita, odcizeni, americka literatura
• English key words: Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, American South, American Literature, Alienation, Modernity
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2013/2014
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: doc. Erik Sherman Roraback, D.Phil.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 10.09.2014
• Date of assignment: 10.09.2014
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 06.10.2014
• Date and time of defence: 09.09.2015 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 31.08.2015
• Date of proceeded defence: 09.09.2015
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

I would like to write my dissertation as a comparative piece on Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty's fiction, examining the concepts of alienation (i.e. narrative, existential, social and religious) and absence, in both of their works. I thought it would be worth considering how these two Southern authors employ various alienating and distancing techniques and the effects that these strategies produce. Firstly, on a formal or narrative scale, both Welty and O’Connor alienate the reader via omniscient, detached narration, without substantial psychological insight into their characters’ minds, forcing the reader to assess the characters’ thoughts, emotions and motives using external cues. Secondly, both authors frequently employ memory sequences as a means of destabilizing and distorting their characters’ sense of self, conflating the boundary between fact and fiction, and resulting in a profound sense of existential alienation. Thirdly, the problem of alienation permeates social relations in the works of O’Connor and Welty, serving as a commentary on the closed-off and isolated(ing) Southern communities. In my thesis, I would like to examine the depiction of Southerners in their relation to internationals and outsiders as well as to the black community, taking into consideration the tension between predominantly white Southern conservatism and tradition, and the rapidly shifting social landscape of the South -i.e. the influx of immigration and the migration and integration of the black community; The works of both O’Connor and Welty (namely “The Displaced Person” and “June Recital”) portray the tenuous relationships between Southerners and immigrants and the difficulty outsiders face when attempting to integrate into Southern communities. This anxiety towards outsiders is problematized by both authors in the South’s treatment of the African-American community, as outdated myths and stereotypes of the African-American people in the South clash with the reality of postbellum America. Furthermore, I'd like to examine the authors' treatment of religion as a relic of the past, in that it is depicted as virtually absent from modern society and has been effectively replaced by consumerism (religion and consumerism are virtually interchangeable vis-à-vis Wise Blood). The aim of my thesis will then be not only to highlight these facets of absence and alienation, but also to examine the psychological and social driving forces behind these alienating practices, examining both the intention and effect of the above-mentioned forms of absence and alienation.
The works I wish to focus on are Flannery O'Connor's "The Displaced Person", "The Artificial Nigger" and Wise Blood, and Welty's "A Piece of News", "A Worn Path", "June Recital" and "A Memory". I have selected these works in particular as they showcase both O’Connor’s and Welty’s tendency to simultaneously draw in and distance the reader from their narratives, while drawing attention to the typically Southern anxieties of: outsiders infiltrating small, close-knit communities, the menacing and corrupting big city as pitted against the idyllic and unspoilt country, and the discrimination and subsequent mythicization of the black community. Both O’Connor and Welty subvert and parody the fear-based, isolating strategies of the American South, tracing the decline of traditional Southern values in the wake of an individualistic, multicultural and sacrilegious modernity.

References

Allen, William Rodney. “The Cage of the Matter: The World as Zoo in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.” American Literature 58.2 (May, 1986).
Baudrillard, Jean. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures. Sage: London, 1998.
Chronaki, Bessie. “Eudora Welty's Theory of Place and Human Relationships.” South Atlantic Bulletin 43.2 (May, 1978).Crawdford, Nicholas. “An Africanist Impasse: Race, Return, and Revelation in the Short Fiction of Flannery O’Connor.” South Atlantic Review 68.2 (Spring, 2003).
Donaldson, Susan V. “Recovering Otherness in The Golden Apples.” American Literature 63.3 (Sep., 1991).
Edmunds, Susan. “Through a Glass Darkly: Visions of Integrated Community in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘Wise Blood.’” Contemporary Literature 37.4 (Winter, 1996).
Hardy, John Edward. “Eudora Welty's Negroes.” Images of the Negro in American Literature. Ed. Seymour Gross and John Edward Hardy. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1966.
Monroe, W.F. “Flannery O’Connor’s Sacramental Icon: ‘The Artificial Nigger.’” South Central Review 1.4 (Winter, 1984).
Nissen, Axel. "'Making the Jump': Eudora Welty and the Ethics of Narrative." Journal of the Short Story in English 35 (Autumn 2000).
Orr, Elaine. “Unsettling Every Definition of Otherness: Another Reading of Eudora Welty's ‘A Worn Path.’” South Atlantic Review 57.2 (May, 1992).
Pitavy-Souques, Danièle. “‘The Fictional Eye’: Eudora Welty's Retranslation of the South.” South Atlantic Review 65.4 (Autumn, 2000).
Pinkerton, Steve. “Profaning the American Religion: Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood.” Studies in the Novel 43.4 (Winter 2011).
Uspensky, Boris. “A Poetics of Composition.” Trans. Valentina Zavarin and Susan Wittig. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973.
Williams, Melvin G. “Black and White: A Study in Flannery O’Connor’s Characters.” Black American Literature Forum 10.4 (Winter, 1976).