Cruciform fiction: Nailed down by Flannery O'Connor's biblical typology

While Flannery O'Connor's Roman Catholic faith shaped her vision of the world, the patristic four-fold method of biblical interpretation as mediated to her through Fr. William F. Lynch had the greatest impact on the way she hammered out her fictional characters. Angular and memorable though her characters are, they are modern versions of biblical types, partially shaped by the dramatic force of biblical texts. It is necessary, then, to consider the biblical possibilities that comprise the "great cloud of witnesses" that have gone before O'Connor's characters and to consider the extent to which many have passed on their biblical DNA. A typological consideration of her characters in "Greenleaf," "Revelation," and "Parker's Back" is indispensible for understanding these stories' trajectories. Learning to see typologically with O'Connor is a necessary step toward understanding her characters' origins, depths, and cruciform typoi.