THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics ...

221 Pages·2016·1.56 MB·English

THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics
Applied to the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the
Department of English
School of Arts and Sciences
Of The Catholic University of America
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy

By

Katherine LeNotre

Washington, D.C.

2017
ABSTRACT

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics
Applied to the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor

Katherine LeNotre, Ph.D.

Director: Virgil Nemoianu, Ph.D.

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics Applied to the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor
confronts the grotesque beauty of Flannery O’Connor’s stories through Balthasar’s
Christological aesthetics. Chapter one examines preliminary aesthetic themes for both Balthasar
and O’Connor, followed by a brief survey of O’Connor criticism. Chapter two focuses on
theological background, noting similar influences on Balthasar and O’Connor. I give a short
history of neo-Thomism and its impact on O’Connor’s thought, then I trace her interest in la
Nouvelle Théologie. The next section of the chapter goes over Balthasar’s relationship with
Scholasticism and la Nouvelle Théologie, and finally his dialogue with Karl Barth on analogy.
The chapter closes with a reading of O’Connor’s story “The Displaced Person” according to a
Balthasarian Christological aesthetic. Chapter three deals with issues of authorship and character.
It opens with O’Connor’s ideas about authorial intention and continues with Balthasar’s notion
of divine authorship from the first volume of Theo-Drama, examining scenes from The Violent
Bear it Away in light of Balthasar’s theology of vocation. A final section compares O’Connor’s
grotesque characters, especially Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, with Balthasar’s “holy fools.” In
Chapter four, I discuss Balthasar’s treatment of classical tragedy in its relation to plot. Balthasar
considers the theological milieu of ancient drama is a precursor to Biblical revelation, and the
tragic figure of the suppliant, especially in Sophocles’ plays, prefigures Christ. I examine
O’Connor’s story “Parker’s Back” with regard to its re-enactment of a Christological plot.
Chapter five considers the story “Judgment Day” in light of Balthasar’s theology of suffering. I
then question the relationship between beauty and O’Connor’s vision, ending with a reading of
the story “Revelation.” A sixth chapter concludes the dissertation with suggestions for the future
of Balthasarian criticism and a final look at O’Connor’s vision of moral beauty. Hans Urs von
Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics Applied to the Fiction of Flannery O’Connor adds
Balthasar’s voice to the many theologians spoken of alongside her fiction. The study also
represents another step toward the greater recognition of Balthasar’s interest for literary
scholarship.
This dissertation by Katherine LeNotre fulfills the dissertation requirements for the
doctoral degree in English approved by Virgil Nemoianu, Ph.D., as Director, and by
Ernest Suarez, Ph.D., and Nicholas J. Healy, Ph.D., as Readers.

_______________________________________
Virgil Nemoianu, Director

_______________________________________
Ernest Suarez, Reader

_______________________________________
Nicholas J. Healy, Reader

ii
To my husband Gaston and our three children born during its composition:
Beatrice, Bernard, and Gerard.
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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Introduction: Aesthetics………………..…1
Chapter 2 Theology and Beauty………………….….46
Chapter 3 The Christological Character……….…...80
Chapter 4 The Christological Plot………………….125
Chapter 5 Beauty and the Cross…………………… 155
Chapter 6 Conclusion…………………………………183
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List of Abbreviations

By Flannery O’Connor:
CW Collected Works of Flannery O’Connor
MM Mystery and Manners
HB The Habit of Being

By Hans Urs von Balthasar:
GL The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (seven volumes)
TD The Theo-Drama (five volumes)
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank my parents, Gregory and Patrice Wolfe, for their heartening support
throughout my education. I thank Dr. Nemoianu for his timely help and
encouragement. I am grateful to Dr. Louise Cowan, who inspired me to continue
studying literature; may she rest in peace. I thank my friends and fellow-students
Sara Sefranek, Veronica Phair, and Lindsay Rerecich for their companionship and
enthusiasm. I cannot properly thank my husband Gaston for his unreserved
attention to my interests. But I do thank him.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
The fiction of Flannery O’Connor is known for grotesquery and ugliness, not
for beauty. Yet there is a kind of beauty in her work, and it springs from her
theological beliefs. The intersection of aesthetics and theology forms the subject of
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s great study The Glory of the Lord: A Theological
Aesthetics. The theological aesthetics of Balthasar as expressed in this work and in
his Theo-Drama provide a hermeneutic for Christian art. For Balthasar, beauty is a
crucial point of contact between the secular and religious spheres. The beauty we
encounter is analogous to the beauty of God; the wonder engendered by beauty
prepares us for the wonder of God’s glory. Christ is the necessary link between
finite and infinite beauty, and Balthasar includes the grotesque pain of the cross as
part of beauty’s dramatic character. This sacrifice is the enduring “tragedy” of God’s
great play, the “Theo-Drama” of creation. I will examine these themes from
Balthasar as they relate to O’Connor’s work and apply them to particular stories
and novels. O’Connor’s work represents characters whose beliefs shape their
aesthetic sense; they also shows how aesthetics can be a starting point for belief in
God. These aesthetically charged characters and events appear in literary art which
is itself an aesthetic object. O’Connor’s stories rely on the ultimate unity of beauty
with goodness emphasized by Balthasar and uncover the potential for beauty in
suffering.

1
2
There are likenesses between the thinking of O’Connor and Balthasar, but
there was no direct influence between the two. O’Connor was a writer from
Milledgeville, Georgia who died in 1964 at the age of 39, having produced a small
but lasting body of fiction. The last volume of Balthasar’s most important work was
not published until 1987, a year before the death of the Swiss priest and theologian.
Thus O’Connor could not have read the “great triptych” even if it had it been
translated immediately. In a 1961 letter to Thomas Stritch, O’Connor wrote, “I don’t
know any new German theologians. All I know is Guardini and Adam” (HB 449).
The only record we have of O’Connor even reading Balthasar’s name comes from her
friend, critic Bill Sessions, who spent time in Germany with a Fulbright
scholarship:
At a vespers service at the Freiburg Cathedral during Lent 1958, I also heard
a homily, about which I wrote O’Connor, by the Swiss priest Hans Urs von
Balthasar, now considered by many one of the greatest Catholic theologians
of the last century. Recalling these thinkers now, almost fifty years later, has
a simple point: Flannery wanted to know about each one and wrote me for
firsthand impressions. (57-58)1
Her interest could not have moved her to investigate even Balthasar’s earlier books
since O’Connor read only English, and his work was translated in the last two

1 Sessions, W. A. “’Then I discovered the Germans’: O’Connor’s Encounter with
Guardini and German Thinkers of the Interwar Period.” In Flannery O’Connor’s
Radical Reality. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 2006. Gretlund, Jan Nordby
and Karl-Heinz Westarp, eds. 56-67.