The Stylistics of Syntactic Complements: Grammar and Seeing in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction

Finite and nonfinite syntactic complements to the verbseein Flannery O'Connor's fiction are examined and shown to contribute stylistically to O'Connor's explorations of the fallibility of human knowledge. A statistical analysis of the entirety of O'Connor's fiction and the general fiction subcorpus of the Brown corpus demonstrates that O'Connor's fiction has a significantly greater concentration ofseetokens resulting in focalization through character reflectors rather than the narrator. Qualitative analysis demonstrates (1) that the boundaries between each of the pairs semantics-pragmatics, physical perception-cognitive perception, and implication-presupposition are porous, (2) that the foreground/background gestalt distinction is multi-leveled, and (3) that the multi-leveled nature of foreground/background helps to explain the pragmatics of complements to the verbsee. Furthermore, the porous nature of these boundaries is central to O'Connor's use of these complements to show that both physical and cognitive seeing are revealing of human limitations and revelatory of God's will and grace.