Everything That Rises Must Converge | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Everything That Rises Must Converge Critical Overview

O'Connor is widely considered one of the most significant writers ever produced by the United States. She was the subject of an unusual amount of critical attention as a young writer, and this fascination has continued over the decades since her death.

Less than a decade after O'Connor started writing, scholars began serious critical interpretation of her work. A special issue of the journal Critique was devoted entirely to her writing in 1958. Early approaches to her fiction tended to focus on the grotesque extremes of her characterization and the bleak violence of her plots.

As she responded to early interpretations with explicit explanations of her beliefs about art and faith in various lectures and essays (collected in 1969 under the title Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose), the critical focus shifted toward O'Connor's moral framework and her religious vision.

The posthumous publication of her last collection of...
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