Mystery & Manners in Savannah

Selected works of Flannery O’Connor

DESTINATION
Savannah, excursion to Milledgeville

DATES
March 29–April 2, 2009 (4 nights)

READINGS
Selected short stories, prose and letters

Description/Itinerary
To read Flannery O’Connor’s fiction is to be amused, provoked, and pushed to reconsider ourselves and our place in the world. A Roman Catholic and a native of Georgia, O’Connor created stories that inimitably blend humour, horror, and the mysteries of faith. While her writing is richly specific, evoking the dusty back roads and quirky characters of the American South, it deals powerfully with universal questions: What does it mean to be good? How should we live? What is the meaning of death? How can the divine penetrate the everyday world? In her relatively short lifetime (1925-1964), O’Connor created a powerful body of work, including two novels and a number of short stories and nonfiction pieces.

Our base will be Savannah, O’Connor’s birthplace and childhood home. Here we will hold our discussions, visit the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home Foundation and explore this beautiful antebellum city’s striking architecture laid out around 24 squares. We then travel by private coach to Milledgeville, where we will be received at Andalusia, the O’Connor family farm by Craig Amason, Director of the Andalusia Foundation. We will also have the opportunity to talk to Dr. Marshall Bruce Gentry, editor of the Flannery O’Connor Review and professor of English at Georgia College and State University and Mary Barbara Tate, a close personal friend of O’Connor. Craig Amason will then guide us through historic Milledgeville, including a visit to O’Connor’s grave and the church where she worshipped.

Leader
Nancy Carr is a senior editor at the Great Books Foundation in Chicago and a freelance writer and teacher of writing and English literature. This is her third visit to O’Connor’s Savannah with Classical Pursuits.

Accommodatiation
The Marshall House, 4 nights

Fees
Price: $1800 Cdn
Single Supplement: $350 Cdn

Fee includes books, accommodation, two meals a day, discussions, walking tours, talks, excursions and admissions.

Non Refundable Deposit
$500 CDN due at registration