Books by John F. Desmond

Argues that Flannery O'Connor's orthodox Catholic theology stands at the centre of her vision, providing the metaphysical base from which her fiction evolved. Given this religious context, it contends that O'Connor's stated view of fiction-writing as an "incarnational act" suggests a direct connection between the practice of fiction-writing and the Incarnation of Christ.

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.