Walker Percy's search for community
By: John F. Desmond.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 271
Subjects: Percy, Walker, 1916- -- Criticism and interpretation.; Peirce, Charles S. 1839-1914 -- Influence.; Community in literature.; Semiotics and literature -- Southern States.
Description: "In the first undertaking of its kind in Percy criticism, John F. Desmond traces - through Walker Percy's six published novels - the writer's central and enduring concerns with community. These concerns, Desmond argues, were grounded in the realism of such Scholastics as Aquinas and Duns Scotus - realism as updated by the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce, the American philosopher whose work Percy studied for more than forty years. Percy gleaned from Peirce the basic truth that humans are by nature relational beings, a truth reinforced by Percy's Catholic belief in mystical community." "Desmond shows how Percy's theosemiotic outlook shaped each of his novels, from The Moviegoer (1961) to The Thanatos Syndrome (1987), and provided a foundation for his analysis of alienation, his critique of scientism, and his vision of community. Percy's vision of community extended from the flawed social world of modern America and Western society to the mystical community beyond time and place prophesied in the Hebrew-Christian scriptures. This vision grew more explicit as Percy's novelistic career unfolded and was of a piece with the ideas developed in his many essays and in his "self-help" parable, Lost in the Cosmos (1983)."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-268) and index.
Table of contents: title: The footprint on the beach : The moviegoer; title: Ground zero and the iron horsehead : The last gentleman; title: The thread in the labyrinth : Love in the ruins; title: The worm of interest : Lancelot; title: The gift of the word : The second coming; title: Community, history, and the word : The Thanatos syndrome.