RT Article
T1 Mrs. May’s Dark Night in Flannery O’Connor’s “Greenleaf”
JF Christianity & literature
VO 65
IS 4
SP 397
OP 412
A1 Piggford, George
LA English
PB Johns Hopkins University Press
YR 2016
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1559157437
AB Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Greenleaf” was significantly influenced by her engagement with the notion of the “dark night of the soul,” which is closely associated with the Christian mysticism of St. John of the Cross. O’Connor became familiar with the dark night through her reading of Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism not long before the composition of “Greenleaf.” The story incorporates imagery from St. John’s poem “On a Dark Night” as well as its source text, the Song of Songs chapters 2 and 3. Mrs. May, the protagonist of “Greenleaf,” undergoes a somewhat ironized version of the dark night over the course of the narrative. Her ultimate experience of mystical union is conditioned and even produced by the story’s “sacralizing” use of free indirect discourse.
K1 Christianity
K1 dark night of the soul
K1 Ethics
K1 Evelyn Underhill
K1 Flannery O’Connor
K1 “Greenleaf”
K1 GREENLEAF (Short story)
K1 John of the Cross
K1 Mysticism
K1 O'Connor, Flannery, 1925-1964
K1 Religious Aspects
K1 Religious Literature : History & criticism
K1 Success
DO 10.1177/0148333116631226