Flannery O’Connor the Hillbilly Thomist: Charting A Catholic Modernist Aesthetics

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February 23, 2021 | Flannery O’Connor once claimed that her Roman Catholic faith was an essential component of her vocation as a writer. Immersed in the currents of the Catholic philosophy, theology, and literary aesthetics of her day, she maintained: “I write the way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic … However, I am a Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness, that thing Jung describes as unhistorical, solitary, and guilty.” In a discussion with Michael Scott, Rev. Mark Bosco, S.J., considered how O’Connor’s grasp of Catholicism, at once both deeply sacramental and robustly intellectual, offered a distinctive way for her to engage twentieth century literary modernism-an engagement that revealed itself in new and startling ways within her stories.