Satire, Self-Knowledge, and the Speculative South  presented by Dr. Jennifer Frey 

Love in the Ruins is a dystopian, science fiction novel about a latter-day Thomas More, one who is not a saint but a self-described bad Catholic—an immoral believer who doesn’t love rightly and doesn’t care to change his ways.  Like all of Percy’s novels, it grapples with the problem of sin, evil, and self-knowledge. Unlike most of his novels, Love in the Ruins is a work of satire, in which irony, humor, wit and fantasy come together to create a speculative vision of the south that has proven to be eerily prescient. This talk will explore the main themes of the novel and argue that satire was the best mode for Percy to explore the philosophical and theological themes that preoccupied him throughout his long career.