Flannery O'Connor's Why Do the Heathen Rage?
"The letter in his hand was an invitation, a plea, a cry from the heart."
Collegium Institute and Dappled Things: A Quarterly of Ideas, Art, and Faith present this summer’s online Global Catholic Literature Seminar on Flannery O’Connor’s unfinished novel Why Do the Heathen Rage? In a daring act of criticism and literary archaeology, Jessica Hooten Wilson has spent the last decade compiling and analyzing O’Connor’s last, unfinished, unpublished novel and bringing it to print sixty years after the author’s untimely demise. This seminar will bring experts and enthusiasts together to reflect on O’Connor’s place in Catholic literature, and assess whether this incomplete novel adds to or detracts from her legacy. Does this novel deserve to stand among her great literary achievements in Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away? How should we read posthumously published works? Would O’Connor herself have wanted this draft to see the light of day? Can this mangled draft with an abrupt end, like the corpse of a bloody, bullet-ridden grandmother on the side of the road, shed light on the dark mysteries of grace?
Schedule:
We will meet on four Mondays in June, from 7-8:30pm:
Registration Fees & Deadlines:
Early Bird Registration ends Wednesday, May 15 at 11:59pm: $65
Regular Registration ends Friday, May 24: $75
Collegium Institute will provide copies of the book to all participants in the United States. International participants are welcome to join, but please note that we can't guarantee that we will be able to send you a copy of the text if you live outside of the US.
