Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Southern literature, from the first half of the twentieth century, deals primarily with the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society. The conflict in the Southern novel is a result of the protagonist's inability to transition from the structure of the Old to the New South. The Southern protagonist is often quite unconscious of his inability to adapt to the modern world because he suffers from a "diffusion of time perspective." As the protagonist struggles to find a harmonic balance between traditional and modern, he is ultimately unable to avoid a tragic fate. The "violence" that must take place in Southern literature is often a final resort of the character when all other alternatives have failed. He is inevitably drawn by fate (or by the hand of God) towards the crossroads where a choice must be made between the agrarian or industrial, between archaic morality or modern atheism, a collision that must be radically violent to be justified. This violent collision reaches its pinnacle of expression in violence involving the automobile.

Honors Project--Smith College, Northampton, Mass., 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-79).

The American South is a rich source of literature that combines the humorous and the horrific in its attempts to explain and expose the region's deep-seated social turmoil. One of the most prolific genres to come out of the South is southern gothic literature that, though not always humorous is known for its use of grotesque imagery and reliance on highly charged melodramatic narratives. When these works are comic, they don't merely reflect the region's strife but attempt to transform it. This dissertation looks at how southern gothic writers Beth Henley, Fannie Flagg and Flannery O'Connor use dark comedy in their works as defiant acts designed to question the status quo and reform the southern landscape by creating ruptures where marginalized people can assert themselves into the norms of American culture. Drawing on several different definitions of comedy, including Barecca's works on female narratives and linguistic theories of jokes, this work defines dark comedy and identifies where humor and horror come together in the works of these southern gothic writers to form particularly dark comic moments. Then, it uses Butler's theory of sites of rupture to explain how dark comedy can be transformative. In Giving an Account of Oneself, Butler explains Foucault's regime of truth as a system that is always both self-reflexive and social - a system where the norms that govern recognition create boundaries where subjects are formed. She goes on to conclude that ruptures can occur within the "horizon of normativity" whereby those relegated to the margins can gain entry and be encompassed within the governing norms. Dark comedy, then, occurs at or even creates that site of rupture in the individual and in the society that experiences it, and allows for the individual, and by extension society, to change its understanding of what is normal and resides within the margins. Within the text, then, dark comedy changes the governing norms to include the once marginalized oddities.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the theme of alienation in selected fiction by Eudora Welty and Flannery O'Connor, taking into consideration the geographic as well as ideological positions from which the two authors write, contextualizing their work in its portrayal as well as critique of the South. Firstly, the insular nature of the South is examined vis-à-vis ethnic and racial othering. The exclusionary social politics of Southern communities are satirized and subverted, as the two authors pit the xenophobic and racist tendencies of their provincial characters against a cultural landscape that fails to accommodate their narrow- minded world view. The gap between the Southern ideology and its contemporaneous reality can be partially accounted for due to the rise of consumer culture, which is discussed in its impact on race relations and social mobility as well as religion. The following chapter, entitled "Commodity Culture and the Americanization of the South," explores the conflation of religious and consumerist ideologies, negotiating the proclaimed adherence to Protestantism in the South with the rise of consumer behaviour as supplanting spirituality. The impact of a ritualistic adherence to capitalist structures is analyzed as promoting a culture of hyper-individualism, narcissism and alienation,...

The purpose of this analysis was to explore how social and cultural values in the South determine meaning in Flannery O’Connor’s fiction. Since Christianity is the predominant religion in the South, only O’Connor’s stories with obvious Christian themes and characters were chosen. Several modern literary theories, along with select criticism of O’Connor’s literature, were used to investigate the fluidity of words and their corresponding meanings in O’Connor’s fiction. Although Flannery O’Connor’s language and depictions are often open-ended, there were definite bounds located, namely, Biblical allusions and Southern cultural standards. These findings demonstrated that the language in O’Connor’s fiction is neither an arbitrary system nor is it driven by the author’s history or intent. It is, therefore, recommended that a cultural approach be applied to Flannery O’Connor’s literature if the goal is to comprehend her religious themes.

This thesis consists of three short stories in very different genres but tied together by a intensely personal look at the lives of its protagonists culminating in epiphanies. One of these epiphanies is intended solely for the reader, but in two cases, the reader and character gains the insight. “The Tears of Angels” looks at the effect one person in a moment, even a stranger, can have on the protagonist’s life. “Climbing Heaven and Gazing on Earth” focuses on the haunting power of history and the need we as humans can feel to share a story, to make sense of it, no matter how personal. In “To Set It Right,” I take history in a different direction, giving it a voice and a power to reach from the past. In all of the stories, the epiphanies serve to point towards meaning and enlightenment in different ways

"Nearer Than the Eye" est un court roman (147 pages) en anglais dont le sujet est une famille québécoise anglo-francophone demeurant à Québec pendant les années 1990. Une mère dévote a des visions d'anges et dialogue avec une relique qu'elle porte dans sa poche, tout en s'inquiètant de sa sœur toxicomane et de sa fille qui sombre dans un monde de sexe et de la drogue. La femme s'en culpabilise à cause d'un secret enfoui dans son passé, avec lequel elle n'a pas encore fait la paix. En deuxième partie, une dissertation commente la façon dont la culture religieuse québécoise et la foi catholique influencent mon écriture en comparant mon roman avec Wise Blood de Flannery O'Connor, notamment en examinant sa pensée sur la fiction catholique. Je fais référence aux éléments de la grotesque et du réalisme magique applicables aux deux ouvrages, tout en faisant un lien avec la théologie catholique.

Cette thèse a pour but principal de renouveler l’étude de la question du rapport entre l’esthétique et l’idéologique dans l’oeuvre de Flannery O’Connor. Contrairement aux études antérieures menées sur cette question, elle sera abordée ici dans le cadre d’une théorie du discours littéraire, c’est-à-dire d’une théorie qui prend en compte les dimensions à la fois performatives et réflexives propres aux textes littéraires. Ce postulat théorique a des conséquences importantes pour l’étude du rapport entre les textes littéraires et les contextes sociaux, politiques, historiques et littéraires de leur mise en circulation et de leur réception. Il implique, notamment, que les ouvrages littéraires inscrivent et négocient dans leur texture même les conditions de leur mise en circulation et de leur réception, et ainsi, que la question de leur contexte doit être abordée en premier par l’étude de cette inscription et de cette négociation textuelles. Pour autant qu’elle tient pleinement compte de la logique médiate de cette inscription et de cette négociation—et notamment des effets médiateurs des figures du lecteur et de l’auteur, ainsi que du genre et du champ littéraire—l’approche pragmatique adoptée dans cette thèse permet non seulement de mener à bien cette étude, mais également de montrer sous un nouveau jour la complexité et la singularité de la signature littéraire de Flannery O’Connor. / The principal aim of this dissertation is to provide a fresh approach to the vexed question of the relationship between the aesthetic and the ideological in the work of Flannery O’Connor. Unlike existing studies of this question in the critical literature, the approach adopted in this dissertation is based on the premise that it can best be treated in the context of a theory of literary discourse, one, in particular, that takes full consideration of the reflexive and performative dimensions of literary works. This theoretical assumption has considerable consequences for the study of the relationship between literary texts and the social, political, historical and literary contexts of their reception and circulation. In particular, it suggests that literary texts inscribe and negotiate the social and historical conditions of their circulation and reception, and that the question of their context should be approached first and foremost through the study of this textual inscription and negotiation. Insofar as it takes full consideration of the mediatory logic that such textual negotiation entails—in particular the mediating presence and effect of the figures of the reader and the author, the genre of the work, and the literary field—literary pragmatics will be seen to provide an approach which not only enables this study, but also reveals in a new light both the complexity and the singularity of Flannery O’Connor’s literary signature.

This thesis examines the relationship between Southern literature and socio-cultural realities of the Southern region of the United States of America. Analyzing works of five distinguished Southern writers, this thesis examines the reflection of specific Southern culture features in literature of the region in the period from the end of the American Civil War to the second half of the 20th century. The thesis oppose the opinion that the primary goal of Southern literature was to promote Southern identity and its cultural superiority above the North. The central hypothesis, that is being verified by this thesis, is that despite the indisputable contribution of highly recognized Southern writers to building of Southern identity, these authors expressed in their works also often sharp critiques of the social conditions in the South.