| Flannery O'Connor is another outstanding representative writer in the southern United States after Faulkner.O'Connor examines her love of the South with her profound thoughts and wise eyes.She strives to explore God's redemption,human beings,existence and religious beliefs.Due to the grotesque style of her creation,her work has been controversial.But with the in-depth study of the author,her work has been more and more accepted.O'Connor's work is long-lasting and it still has meaning today,because O'Connor has an unique understanding of human existence.This understanding led the author to discover that there is a commonality between the religious view of O'Connor's works and the existential theology of the 19 th century.Existential theology is mainly a religious philosophy represented by Kierkegaard's thought.Kierkegaard has been discussing the existence of the individual from the perspective of God throughout his life,and this kind of concern about the existence of the problems in O'Connor's works has a commonality across time and space.Therefore,in addition to the introduction and conclusion,this thesis is divided into four chapters.The introduction part combs the current research situation of O'Connor,and points out that the innovation of this paper lies in elucidating the existential theological connotation contained in O'Connor's creative thought.This topic chooses the relatively rare research angle in O'Connor's research at present.In addition,the introduction also defines and expounds the concept of existentialist theology,the basic ideological system,and the connotation used in this paper.The first chapter explores the connection between O'Connor's creation and Kierkegaard's existentialist theology by discussing his philosophical thinking and literary expression of the “despair” living situation.The first section elaborates O'Connor's philosophical understanding of the living situation of “despair”,which is similar to Kierkegaard's theological interpretation of “if you are yourself in despair”.The second section still starts from O'Connor's text,and discusses the description of another kind of“despair” situation in her works,and analyses the connotation of the existentialist theological thought of “not being yourself in despair”.The third section summarizes the significance of “despair” in O'Connor's works and the ways to transcend despair to clarify the correspondence between O'Connor and existentialist theology.The second chapter explores O'Connor's philosophical thinking on rationality,and analyses her existential theology.In the first section,through the analysis of O'Connor's novels,the rational life in O'Connor's eyes has a strong resonance with Kierkegaard's theological thought of “rational stage” which is one of the three levels of his life.Sectiontwo explores O'Connor's way out for rationalists by discussing O'Connor's novels.It analyses that the belief contained in O'Connor is not rational reasoning but survival experience.In the course of belief,we must cross the cliff of rationality to produce a qualitative jump,which is an existential theological thought.The third chapter explores the relationship between belief and the essence of human existence in O'Connor's works.The first section explores the meaning of death in O'Connors works from O'Connor's view of death and her experience of being shrouded by death,and analyses her existentialist theology that death is the inevitable outcome of human existence.Therefore,death is also a kind of survival,which we must face up to.In the second section,through the discussion of “free choice” in O'Connor's works,it is analyzed that the religion implied in O'Connor's works does not lie in the choice of belief,but cannot be separated from the existence of human beings.It is not so much that the existential people choose religion as that they complete the existential theology of human beings by choosing religion.The fourth chapter is the summary of the whole paper.The first section explores O'Connor's perception of sin,which is connected with Kierkegaard's “sense of guilt”.The second section,from the point of view of life and guilt,summarizes O'Connor's means of Redemption-violence.By discussing O'Connor's and Kierkegaard's similar life experiences,we can verify their agreement on the issue of redemption: misfortune and suffering are human sins,tempering human beings,and the premise of salvation.In the third section,O'Connor normalizes the life state of contemporary people who have abandoned their beliefs,focusing on how ordinary people choose their beliefs freely in real life situations.On this point,O'Connor and Kierkegaard have a strong resonance: in the circumstances of survival,only as Abraham must make a choice,can we firmly believe in God,can we eliminate the pain of the heart and obtain infinite truth.The conclusion part points out that it is no accident to interpret O'Connor with existential theology,sum up the value and significance of this paper,and look forward to the prospects of O'Connor's research. |
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