"Flowering Judas": Katherine Anne Porter

by Virginia Spencer Carr

Overview

Katherine Anne Porter often spoke of her story "Flowering Judas" as the tale she liked best of all her stories because it came the nearest to what she meant it to be. It is the story of Laura, an idealistic woman, who travels to Mexico from Arizona at the age of twenty-two to assist the Obreg-n Revolution.

This casebook on "Flowering Judas" addresses Porter's ambivalence surrounding her roles as woman and artist and also attests to the profound influence of Mexico upon her work. Readers of this early tale will not be surprised to learn that although Porter was a practicing feminist in her life and her work, she actually eschewed the feminist label.

Virginia Spencer Carr brings her own sharply focused biographer's eye to the introduction, further illuminating the story and the superb critical essays that it provokes. The casebook includes the authoritative text of the story itself, Porter's own statement regarding the genesis of this highly acclaimed work, an important interview, a collection of significant essays on "Flowering Judas" and the historical, cultural, and personal milieu from which the tale evolved, a bibliography, and a chronology of Porter's life and work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813519791
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	08/01/1993
Series:	Women Writers: Texts and Contexts
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Virginia Spencer Carr is a professor and chair of the Department of English at Georgia State University. She is the author of The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers, Understanding Carson McCullers, and Dos Passos, A Life.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 

Introduction
Flowering Judas
Background to the Story
Critical Essays 

Selected Bibliography 
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