Controlled Distance: Internal Character Presentation in Flannery O'Connor's Short Stories
This dissertation explores the nature and function of narrative distance in Flannery O'Connor's short stories. Narrative distance, in its most general sense, involves the position from which readers view fictional characters and the worlds they inhabit. In stories like O'Connor's, third-person structures which rely heavily on internal character presentation, the study of narrative distance focuses on techniques used to take the reader inside the consciousnesses of characters. O'Connor's stories were chosen as the subject of this study because they share a consistency of design and purpose rarely found in modern fiction. Her exclusive use of third-person narration, her preference for single-character focus, and, perhaps most significantly, the overwhelmingly consistent rhetorical thrust of her stories make them appropriate candidates for a study of narrative distance.
Literature, Modern, Speech Communication, Literature, American
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign