C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Flandery O'Connor are particularly rich sources for reflection.

And time spent on them and their work is well rewarded.

Just if I could ask quickly, how many of you feel like you've read a lot of C.S. Lewis?

Tolkien?

O'Connor?

Oh, okay, so still a lot for O'Connor, but maybe the third place.

That's okay.

My own assignment this afternoon, as a member of this panel, is O'Connor,

but I can't help but discuss her creative vision in relation to her fellow English Christians. Recently I've been spending more time with Tolkien than with Lewis,

and so I'm going to use some things that Tolkien says,

principally in his essay on fairy stories, to develop two elemental features of Flannery O'Connor's Christian imagination.

And I hope Professor Coons will forgive me a little bit

for trespassing on his territory. One of those features she shares with Tolkien and Lewis, though I'm

going to leave Lewis out of things for the most part, and it's arguably the most important characteristic

of Christian literature. But the other feature, she does not share

with him. Indeed, if we were to compare her in this regard to another Catholic novelist who rewrote

Old Norse Tales, it would be to Sigrid Unset rather than to Tolkien. It's not my intention to

argue that O'Connor is right or wrong to emphasize what she does

over against someone like Tolkien, but if we're going to appreciate the work of these authors

and understand what we might learn from them and what role they might play in our future,

we should try to understand why they wrote as they did and what they might gain or give up

as a result.

...