Exploring the Concept of the Holy Fool and Theological Influences in Southern Literature

Flannery O’Connor is known for her short stories in which “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” But it’s often those ugly, mean, disgusting, scandalizing, violent, weird, or downright hateful characters in Flannery O’Connor stories that become the vessels of grace delivered.

So, how should we read Flannery O’Connor?

Jessica Hooten Wilson (Pepperdine University) joins Evan Rosa to open up about Flannery O’Connor’s life, her unique perspective as a writer, the theological and moral principles operative in her work, all as an immense invitation to read O’Connor and find the beauty of God’s grace that emerges amidst the most horrendous evils. Includes a discussion of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “Greenleaf.”

Show Notes

• Check out Jessica Hooten Wilson’s presentation of Flannery O’Connor’s final, unfinished novel: Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?
• Click here for an online copy of “Greenleaf” to follow along with our analysis
• Spiritual formation through the works of Flannery O’Connor
• How to read for a flourishing life
• “Greenleaf” by Flannery O’Connor
• Flannery O’Connor’s reading grounded in tradition of early church mothers and fathers.
• Paying attention to every individual word.
• First word: Mrs. Mays looses her agency.
• Europa & the Bull, Ovid’s Metamorphosis
• Mrs. May’s blinds as hiding pieces of reality, shutting out God
• The spiritual truth of the story is concealed when not read attentively and intentionally
• Flannery’s writings defying instant gratification
• “The wrong kind of horror”
• The development of American consumerism
• Showing versus enjoying violence
• Sacramental reading
• The Holy Fool
• The Violent Bear It Away as a hymn to the eucharist
• O’Connor requires spiritual reading.
• A summary of “Greenleaf”
• Pierced by the bull, a violent union of Savior and sinner
• O’Connor’s Christian characters; “A Good Man is Hard to Find”
• Characters changing and choosing faith before death.
• The final paragraph of “Greenleaf”
• Mrs. Greenleaf as the opposite of Ivan Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamazov
• Opening to the world with the knowledge of God
• Pentecostalism and zeal in “Greenleaf”
• Stabbed in the heart, medieval mysticism
• “Lord, help us dig down under things and find where you are”

About Jessica Hooten Wilson

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Fletcher Jones Endowed Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University (’23) and previously served as the Seaver College Scholar of Liberal Arts at Pepperdine University (’22-’23). She co-hosts a podcast called The Scandal of Reading: Pursuing Holy Wisdom with Christ & Pop Culture, where she discusses with fellow authors, professors, and theologians with Claude Atcho and Austin Carty. She is the author of Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progres*s (Brazos Press, January 23, 2024); Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Brazos Press, 2023);* Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints (Brazos Press, 2022) which received a Christianity Today 2023 Award of Merit (Culture & the Arts) and a Midwest Book Review* 2023 Silver Book Award (Nonfiction – Religion/Philosophy); co-author with Dr. Jacob Stratman of Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds that Came Before (Zondervan Academic, 2022); Giving the Devil his Due: Demonic Authority in the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor and Fyodor Dostoevsky* (February 28, 2017), which received a 2018 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award in the Culture & the Arts; as well as two books on Walker Percy: *The Search for Influence: Walker Percy and Fyodor Dostoevsky* (Ohio State University Press, 2017) and Reading Walker Percy’s Novels (Louisiana State University Press, 2018); most recently she co-edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: *The Russian Soul in the West* (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020).

She has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship to the Czech Republic, an NEH grant to study Dante in Florence in 2014, and the Biola Center for Christian Thought sabbatical fellowship. In 2018 she received the Emerging Public Intellectual Award given by a coalition of North American think tanks in collaboration with the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College, and in 2019 she received the Hiett Prize in Humanities from The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Production Notes

• This podcast featured Jessica Hooten Wilson
• Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa
• Hosted by Evan Rosa
• Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Tim Bergeland
• A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/about
• Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give