“Penetrating the Veil Between Sacred and Secular: Southern Short Stories”
Join Dr. Larry Allums for “Penetrating the Veil Between Sacred and Secular: Southern Short Stories”
Discuss short stories that reveal sacred truths in a secular world.
Four-class bundle, Sept. 12, 19, 26, Oct. 3, 2023, 7:00 p.m. CST, Virtual Class
The poetic imagination can bridge the seeming chasm between sacred and secular domains, revealing immortal truths. Samuel Taylor Coleridge described this ability as the “repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.”
Southern women writers of the early and mid-20th century are remarkably acute in using this ability. Four short stories by Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and Katherine Anne Porter will be read and discussed.
The course will consist of four weekly Tuesday evening sessions, each 1 hour + 15 minutes focusing on one short story.
Dr. J. Larry Allums is Senior Consultant and Board Member of the MacMillan Institute and Executive Director Emeritus of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. He earned his M.A. In Literature and his Ph.D. in Literature and Political Philosophy from the University of Dallas’ Institute of Philosophic Studies. He has edited a volume of essays on epic poetry, The Epic Cosmos, and published articles and book chapters on Dante, ancient Greek and Roman literature, and writers of the American Southern Renascence, including William Faulkner, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Caroline Gordon, and others.