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Shadow Side of Grace: The Nekyia of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

Shadow Side of Grace: The Nekyia of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood
By author: Scott M. Foran
Product Code: P743
ISBN: 9798897360260
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Flannery O’Connor's WISE BLOOD is a text full of rich symbolism, a metaphoric landscape which is best understood using an integration of literary and depth psychological hermeneutics. Applying an anagogical framework to the novel, an interpretive approach meant to reveal spiritual meaning, makes it possible to see through the world of O'Connor's Taulkinham, the fictional setting for the novel, to that of the biblical. Once the parallel between the modern and the mythic is established, the interpretation is further enhanced by identifying the novel as a nekyia, a descent to the realm of the dead. This descent can be seen as an inner descent into the unconscious, a concept developed by Sigmund Freud, C.G. Jung, James Hillman, and Evans Lansing Smith. The nekyia is symbolically portrayed in Hazel Motes's travels throughout the city. In addition to the symbolism of the story itself, the process of writing WISE BLOOD can be seen as O'Connor's personal nekyia. Lupus hospitalized the young author before she was able to complete the first draft of the novel. This unexpected and devastating reminder of mortality forced O'Connor to confront her own fears and come to terms with the reality of the disease that would kill her twelve years after the publication of WISE BLOOD.
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Reviews

Review by: Jordan Cofer, author of THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO FLANNERY O'CONNOR - December 27, 2025
"Scott Foran offers an entirely new method for reading WISE BLOOD through the lens of nekyia, the literary trope of consulting the dead. Through this approach, he simultaneously puts O'Connor's debut novel in conversation with classical Greek, Jungian, and biblical traditions to create a distinctive theological vision. Ultimately, Foran's analysis contributes fresh insights into O'Connor's authorial intent, while deepening our understanding of the novel."
Review by: Matt Bryant Cheney, assistant professor of English and editor of the Flannery O’Connor Review, Georgia College & State University - December 27, 2025
"By directing our attention to the nekyia and its persistence in Flannery O'Connor's life and work, THE SHADOW SIDE OF GRACE offers readers the most thorough and insightful overview of WISE BLOOD in some time, and it does so by weaving together meticulous close reading with biographical insights and mythological intersections as diffuse and eclectic as O'Connor's own reading habits. Scott Foran becomes the Virgil to our Dante, guiding us through O'Connor's mythical imagination and, in so doing, reminding us of Thomas Merton's claim that O'Connor is better viewed alongside Sophocles than her twentieth century contemporaries. Those looking for an authoritative Christian reading of O'Connor's uses of mythology will not be disappointed."
Review by: Katheryn Krotzer Laborde, author of FLANNERY O'CONNOR'S MANHATTAN - December 27, 2025
"In THE SHADOW SIDE OF GRACE, Scott Foran looks at Flannery O’Connor’s WISE BLOOD through the lens of the nekyia. Starting with the novel's underworld explorations as compared to other literary journeys (as found in THE ODYSSEY, THE AENEID, and others), he then moves on to Freud and Jung to examine aspects of the psychological. From there, he regards how O'Connor worked (and wrote) through trauma caused by both her father's premature passing and her own early reckoning with mortality. As such, Foran's book offers scholars a multi-layered avenue for considering this much studied (and, for some, beloved) text."

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