Recovering Interpretative Possibilities in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor: An Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the responses to Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, highlighting both the strengths and weaknesses of the reception history, and argues for the need to recover the breadth of interpretation her work invites. The writers discuss the concept of authorial intent as it relates to O’Connor and lay out their premise that author, text, and audience all play roles in the process of meaning making. The authors also provide chapter summaries for each of the essays included in the volume.