Cultural
Criticism of Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard
to Find”
Look at Tyson, p. 298:
“Our goal is to use
new historicism and cultural criticism to help enrich our reading of literature
by helping us see how literary
texts participate in the circulation of discourses, shaping and shaped by the
culture in which they emerge and by the cultures in which they are interpreted;
by helping us see the ways in which the circulation of discourses is the circulation of
political/social/intellectual/economic power; and by helping us see the ways in
which our own cultural positioning influences our interpretation of literary
and non-literary texts.” (underscore added)
1) Identify what cultural discourses are at
play in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” and/or from what cultural discourses the
story seems to have emerged. I.e.,
simply name those discourses.
2) Watch today’s slide show for a few
minutes, and then modify, if necessary, your response
to question #1 above. (See if the slide show helps you to isolate/identify
discourses, or otherwise prompts ideas.)
3) How is O’Connor’s story shaping or shaped
by the discourses you identified above?
In other words:
a.
How is the story a product of those discourses? In what
way does it seem to have arisen from them?
—and—
b.
How is the story affirming, subverting,,
or merely reflecting those
discourses? (Another way of asking this is: what “cultural work” is the text
doing?) SUPPORT YOUR RESPONSE WITH DETAILS
4) As cultural critics, what
is your personal/political/social/cultural position
in relation to this story? I.e., identify who you are as readers, where you are
coming from, what your relationship is to this story, what your biases are, and
what, if any, is your agenda. Disclose anything that you think may be affecting
your reading and understanding of O’Connor’s story. (This is a responsibility
of all cultural and new historical critics.)