A Return to Receptivity: Exploring Wonder with Vladimir Nabokov¿s Pale Fire and Flannery O¿Connor¿s Wise Blood

This thesis engages with two American novels from the mid-twentieth century, Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (1962) and Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor (1952), to demonstrate various modes in which literature expresses, evokes, and invites wonder. I draw from contemporary philosophical accounts, particularly the writings of William Desmond, that identify wonder as a state of affirmative receptivity. Desmond categorizes three primary expressions of wonder: astonishment, perplexity, and curiosity, each of which emerges in response to an encounter with an excess or surplus of meaning. By cultivating openness to sources of value, meaning, and ways of knowing outside the self, wonder resists isolation as a self-enclosed ego, forges and maintains meaningful connections with others, and reorients one towards possibility. My thesis provides an analysis of Pale Fire and Wise Blood through the lens of Desmond’s framework. I argue that Nabokov invites a renewed and affirming astonishment towards reading itself, while O’Connor plunges her readers alongside her characters into states of spiritual and epistemological perplexity and curiosity that nevertheless allow new possibilities of redemption and hope to emerge.
Literature’s ability to evoke wonder has long been recognized, but in this thesis I examine in particular how Pale Fire and Wise Blood, in portraying experiences of wonder by their characters, demonstrate both the modern subject’s need for connection and the affordances of literature for articulating new pathways through which meaning can be reached. That wonder is not limited to a particular set of conditions or personalities, but continues to avail itself as a compelling response as long as we encounter things that exceed our understanding, is demonstrated by the radically different nature of the two texts. I argue that both Nabokov and O’Connor aim at relationality, reconnecting readers with real sources of value outside themselves. Despite and because of their differing approaches to wonder, considering these two novels together invites affirmation towards the range of possibilities offered by literature itself as a site of meaningful encounter where wonder can emerge.