These new critical essays on Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's explosive first novel, not only question our understanding of the "Southern Gothic," but launch a new inquiry into the nature and history of O'Connor's critical reputation, at a time when the construction of literary history is itself conflicted.

Despite being a woman and a twentieth-century author - conditions that have traditionally proved inimical to canonization - O'Connor is now perceived as a "classic" American writer and continues to speak with striking clarity and disturbing vision to successive generations. Thus far, however, most critical interpretations of Wise Blood have been written in much the same key, focusing on the theological strength of its themes and the major character, Hazel Motes.

The essays presented here break the monotony of this critical treatment by holding the novel up to the light of several new and controversial methodologies.

The collection begins with Michael Kreyling's explanation of the nature and history of O'Connor's literary reputation using quotations from her letters and works and from critical reviews and articles covering the history of her presence in the canon. Four critical essays, alluded to in the general introduction, then take up the novel from four distinct and often controversial, points of view.

Robert Brinkmeyer, Jr., who has written on O'Connor from a more or less traditional theological view in the past, writes a reevaluative essay from that point of view. Patricia Yaeger writes a feminist/psychoanalytical essay exploring the construction of the narrative voice in Wise Blood. James Mellard links O'Connor and Lacan, exploring territory that O'Connor herself found dangerous and irresistible: psychology and psychoanalysis.

Lance Bacon, finally, writes one of the most original essays in print, placing O'Connor in the milieu of her times, American popular culture of the 1950s.