Reading Flannery O'Connor in Spain

This collection of essays places Flannery OConnors work in constructive and collaborative dialogue with Spanish literature and literary aesthetics. The international scholars who contributed to this volume explore the ways in which OConnors literary and religious vision continues to work in the imaginations of both American and Europeanmostly Spanishauthors. The subtitle of the collectionFrom Andalusia to Andalucais a play on the name of OConnors family farm in Milledgeville, GeorgiaAndalusiawhere she spent the last sixteen years of her life living with her mother. It is said that the farms name was chosen because its location in Milledgeville was the farthest north the Spanish explorers of the sixteenth century traveled in the eastern U.S. before returning to Florida to establish permanent Spanish settlements. While perhaps colloquial in its origins, it is, nevertheless, a fitting and emblematic link between the Southern Gothic aesthetics of OConnors Andalusia and the baroque heritage of southern Spains Andaluca. The essays in this collection explore OConnors literary vision through three interpretive lenses: first, through the relationship of the literary grotesque (a genre that often defines her work) with the Spanish baroque aesthetics that have come to define Spains artistic heritage; second, through the relationship between OConnors literary imagination and the literature of other European writers that broaden the intellectual conversation about her work; and, third, through comparisons with other writers whose Catholic imaginations made their workas the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts itcounter, original, spare, strange. As the essays contained in this volume show, the work of Flannery OConnor continues to bear rich intellectual and spiritual fruit when engaging with enculturated literary and aesthetic traditions.