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ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1 R 4EJ, ENGLAND 7922413 LAMB, MELXNDA THE GROWTH OF A DESIGN! FRANK OICONNOR'S STORY CYCLES. THE: UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO, PH.D., 1979 University Micrdfilms International 3OON. ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, MMSIO6 PLEASE NOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed 1n the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark . 1. Glossy photographs 2. Colored illustrations 3. Photographs with dark background 4. Illustrations are poor copy 5. Print shows through as there is text on both sides of page 6. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages throughout 7. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine 8. Computer printout pages with indistinct print 9. Page(s) lacking when material received, and not available from school or author 10. Page(s) seem to be missing in numbering only as text follows 11. Poor carbon copy 12. Not original copy, several pages with blurred type 13. Appendix pages are poor copy 14. Original copy with light type 15. Curling and wrinkled pages j/ 16. Other Universe Mlcrdnlms International 300 N. ZEES ao.. ANN ARBOR. Ml J8106 '3131 761-4700 THE GROWTH OP A DESIGN: FRANK O'CONNOR'S STORY CYCLES by Melinda Lamb A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1979 Approved by Dissertation Advised APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation Adviser ll»WJ I)/,«. 1 *><r r- Committee Members —- !A «r,x \lft ini Date of Acceptance by Committee M U, m± Date of Final Oral Examination ii 0*Connor, who judges the merits of a literary genre by ethical values embodied in it, the form of the story cycle becomes a vessel for preserving the household gods of the novel of the last century until the modern world can relearn the values of the middle-class morality reflected in it. The relation between literature and morality is paramount in O'Connor's work, and it is the cause for his naming the nineteenth-century realistic novel as the greatest of all possible forms; the word "novel" does not even apply to "autobiographical" fiction of the twentieth century which does not embody sound social and ethical principles. A short story by itself can express alienation and loneliness, and it is here that most of O'Connor's critics stop. According to O'Connor himself the modern storyteller's theme must be loneliness. But a story cycle gives the writer scope to criticize the failures of the modern world, and perhaps even to begin the reform of a temporarily confused middle-class society. Thus O'Connor's theory of art is pragmatic: the writer should be a moralist and a reformer determined to help reweave a strong new social and ethical fabric for future generations. O'Connor is a reactionary in the face of modern "autobiographical" writing at the same time that he thinks of himself as a writer in the vanguard of a new and healthy realistic literature. The bridge between the nineteenth-century realistic novel and the realistic novel of the future is composed of Frank O'Connor's story cycles. While this extraordinary critical position reveals that LAMB, MELINDA. The Growth of a Design: Frank O'Connor's Story Cycles. (1979) Directed by: . Dr. Robert Watson. Pp. 273 Criticism on Prank O'Connor's short fiction since his death in 1966 generally draws upon a nucleus of assumptions—that the Irish storyteller's thematic interests take precedence over formal ones, that his style belongs to the realistic tradition of an earlier age, and that the themes themselves belong to a modern romantic tradition. By characterizing O'Connor as a realist in style and as a romantic in theme his critics are able to reconcile some of O'Connor's own claims to be a realist and a romantic, a liberal and a conservative, a reactionary and a writer in the vanguard of the newest literary developments. There is another approach to his stories that accounts for some of the contradictions, and at the same time reveals an intimate relationship between O'Connor's form and his content: that approach involves the considera­ tion of his stories as forming larger groups, or cycles. A story cycle in its simplest definition is a volume of independent stories whose sum is greater than the addition of its parts. The story cycle is a form O'Connor praises in the work of Ivan Turgenev, whom he credits with the discovery of its usefulness in reflecting a society suffering from dissociation and alienation, a society that to O'Connor is as unhealthy as the world of the nineteenth-century realistic novel is healthy. For nearly all modern writers are out of step except O'Connor himself, the position is at the heart of his major contri­ bution to modern literature—a coherent body of story cycles, united in content and form to express O'Connor's vision of reality. TABLE OP CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE ii INTRODUCTION: O'CONNOR'S DESIGN iv CHRONOLOGY xiii PART I. THE MANUFACTURE OF A DESIGN: O'CONNOR'S CRITICISM AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY 1 Chapter I. O'Connor's Early Criticism, 1922-19^5 2 Chapter II. The Major Criticism, The Mirror in the Roadway and The Lonely Voice I I I 21 Chapter III. The Feminine and Masculine Principles: O'Connor's Autobiography ... 78 II. THE GROWTH OF A DESIGN: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STORY CYCLE 10 8 Chapter IV. Pieces of a Mosaic, Guests of the Nation and Bones of Contention . I T . 109 Chapter V. The Novels: The Saint and Mary Kate and Dutch Interior 165 Chapter VI. The Story Cycle, Crab Apple Jelly and The Common Chord 189 Chapter VII. The Mature Design, Traveller's Samples and Domestic Relations 222 Chapter VIII. Conclusion I I T 258 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 268 ill INTRODUCTION: O'CONNOR'S DESIGN Since Frank O'Connor's death in 1966 there has been growing critical interest in his short fiction, although he also wrote plays, novels, poems, autobiography, biography, and works of criticism. There is general agreement among his recent critics—as there was among critics during his lifetime—that O'Connor is primarily a short story writer whose successes in this genre far overshadow the achievements of his other work. There is also general agreement that O'Connor's thematic interests take precedence over formal ones, an opinion fostered by O'Connor himself, who vitriolically criticized writers he felt "loved litera­ ture too well," including four he said should never have been writers: Ben Jonson, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and James Joyce. They "cared more for its form than its content and adopted toward it the fetichistic attitude of impoverished old maids inheriting ancestral mansions.11^ Very little, in fact, has been said about O'Connor's style except that it belongs to the realistic tradition of an earlier age. Gerry Brenner, the first critic to attempt * Frank O'Connor, The Mirror in the Roadway (New York: Knopf, 1956), p. 22TAll further references to this work are in the text. iv a comprehensive analysis of O'Connor's stories, comments in 1967 that "Frank O'Connor's kind of storytelling is not modish just now . .he writes in the manner of the nineteenth century realists, stories which in plot and action interest him more than symbol, sensitivity, and experi- p mentation." There is also general critical agreement that while O'Connor's style is realistic and subservient to theme, the themes themselves belong to a modern romantic tradi­ tion.