caa a22 4500 397551770 CHVBK 20180308164752.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161202e199603 xx s 000 0 eng 10.1093/litthe/10.1.58 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)oxford-10.1093/litthe/10.1.58 Sykes John Wingate University, North Carolina, U.S.A. CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC USES OF THE GROTESQUE IN JOHN IRVING AND FLANNERY O'CONNOR [Elektronische Daten] [John Sykes] In A Prayer for Owen Meany John Irving proves himself to be an heir of Nathaniel Hawthorne in much the same sense as Flannery O'Connor. Each writer employs the category of the supernatural in writing what Hawthorne called romances. In the fictions of O'Connor and Irving, the romance takes on a grotesque character. I argue diat the grotesque has a specifically religious meaning in these works Irving and O'Connor use it to explore the nature of Christian conversion. Using Hans Frei and Karl Barth I point out differences between the writers' understandings of die supernatural. Irving seems to speak for a particular kind of religious experience as the ground of Christian belief. Supernatural occurrences which violate naturalistic assumptions make religious belief credible. O'Connor's vision is by contrast sacramental; personal revelation for her is a matter of seeing the whole of reality in a new trinitarian light © Oxford University Press Articles nationallicence Literature and Theology Oxford University Press 10/1(1996-03), 58-67 0269-1205 10:1<58 1996 10 litthe https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/10.1.58 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/10.1.58 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 100 1- Sykes John Wingate University, North Carolina, U.S.A NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Literature and Theology Oxford University Press 10/1(1996-03), 58-67 0269-1205 10:1<58 1996 10 litthe Metadata rights reserved CC BY-NC-4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-oxford