【正文】 ription, phrases and an odd insight that contains more real poetry than a dozen of poems. (Giroux 237) O?Connor do not talk about herself in her stories, while silent and distant anger explodes from the quiet surface of her stories. Critics see her anger as the search to save her moral being through her belief in Jesus Christ. Others do not deny her Roman Catholic religious beliefs. Yet they see her presenting things themselves instead of writing things. O?Connor is not a prolific writer because the disease lupus tortures her much. During the short life, she altoghterr writes two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics 2 The Violent Bear It Away (1960), 31 short stories , most of which are collected in A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everthing That Rises Must Converge (1965). Three of her short stories, A Circle in the Fire, Greenleaf, Everything That Rises Must Converge have been nominated for O?Henry Awards separately in1954, 1956 and 1962. O?Connor died in 1964 at the age of 39. Alice Wlker has pity for O?Connor?s early death, “she was an artist who thought she might die yough, and who then knew for certain she she would. Her view of her characters pierces right through to the skull” (Walker 71). The work discussed in this thesis is gothic art of Flannery O?Connor in her short stories. Death, violence, grotesque and religious faith has always been rhe major themes in O?Connor?s fictions, which are distinctive characteristics of gothic novels. As the studies show, American Southern writers are full nurtured from a great gothic tradition in their writings and Southern Renaissance “has bee synonymous with the grotesque” (White 1). Being an important writer in American Southern literature, O?Connor, who roots deeply in her profound local culture, raises much attention from readers and critics for her innovation to traditional gothic writings. To most readers, O?Connor?s fictions are odd, cold and diapassionate, always in stark violent and death. She prefers freak fatalities and awfulness to wake up religious consciousness of people. As a devout Catholic, she fully awares few readrs share her faith in religion. Thus she believes “to the hard of hearing your shout, and for the almostblind you draw large and startling figures” (Fitzgerald 33). This thesis focuses on O?Connor?s unique use of grotesque and how she presents her thoughts threough gothic elements and vehicles. The thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter briefly introduces gothic traditon in American literature, as well as gothic genre in American Southern literature. Chapter two ananlsizes gothic devices in her works, including gothic characters and settings. Chapter three deals with distincitve features of gothic in her writings, which refers to the motif of violence,death and religous redemption.B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics 3 Chapter One Gothic Genre in Western Literature Having a touch of gothic genre will help us understand O?Connor in an exact and prensive way.. Flannery O?Connor, who is known as the best writerr in Southern literature only next to William Faulkner, perates the utmost reality of the modern world by applying ubiquitous gothic elements. The main theme of her writing is moralteaching though she never explains it eagerly. “Fiction writing is very seldom a matter of saying things。 it is a matter of showing things” (Fitzgerald 93). I. Formaton of Gothic Genre The word “Gothic” has undergone many changes and expansions. In its earliest sense, it denotes the language and ethnic identity of the Goths, a savage tribute living in northeast border of Roman empire. Gothic style is prevenlent in the Middle Ages, one that is viewed as “Dark Age” for the ignorance of knowledge. Thus the word “gothic” contsins the meaning of “medieval” and”barbarous” in the eighteenth century. the word “Gothic” also refers to a unique style of architecture according to Hornby, a kind of architecture built in the style that was popular in Western Europe from the 12th century to the 16th centuries, and which has pointed arches, windows, and tall thin pillars and a novel written in the style popular in the 18th and 19th centuries, which described romantic adventures in mysterious or frightening surroundings. (Hornby 883) The “Gothic”, in a literary sense, refers to a genre of literature involves poetry, fiction, drama and film, which is “full of depicts of murders and supernatural things to thrill readers” (Han 36), and “deals with the strange, mysterious, and supernatural designed to invoke suspense and terror in readers” (Zhao 283). The early gothic classics are only novels that still remains important in modern Gothic writing. It flourishes in the late eighteenth century and early ninteenth century. The first Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story, written by Horace Walpole, is B. A. Thesis of Shandong University of Finance and Economics 4 immensely successful among readers, making many of them afraid to go to bed at that time. It is the first attempt to find “a tale of amusing fiction upon the basis of the ancient romance of chivalry” (Walter 115) . what?s more, the novel was “an attempt to blend the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern” (Horace 19). The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story has occupied the pioneering e wide poplace in the history of gothic and an irreplaceable one in English Literature. The pularity of Gothic novel initiatives many followers. Among them, Ann Radcliff and Mathew Gregory Lewis are two most famous ones for their respective work The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Monk. In 1794, Ann Radcliffe publishes her most famous gothic novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, which is noted for its poetic description of landscape. The Monk(1