In the following essay, Page discusses the paucity of a truly Southern literature prior to the Civil War and summarizes the principal Southern novelists, short story writers, and poets of the antebell...
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In the following essay, Degler outlines the economic and historical sources of Southern cultural distinctiveness, maintaining nonetheless that differences between Northerners and Southerners in the fi...
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In the following excerpt, Ridgely observes myth-making qualities in the novels of the Old South—romantic works that elaborate themes of Southern uniqueness, manifest destiny, and separatism.
...
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In the following essay, Bakker probes John Pendleton Kennedy's subtle critique of the pastoral ideal in Swallow Barn and his subsequent reaffirmation of this myth in Horse-Shoe Robinson.
An ...
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In the following essay, Kreyling highlights the typical adherence of the antebellum novel to the conventions of heroic romance.
We lack a tradition in the arts; more to the point, we lack a literar...
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In the following excerpt, Gray studies the antebellum novels of William Gilmore Simms and his contemporaries as they valorize the South while occasionally depicting the region as slowly but continuous...
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In the following essay, Watson illuminates William Gilmore Simms's comparison of Revolutionary America with the antebellum South in his novels of the 1850s and 1860s.
In the first part of hi...
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In the following essay, Bakker emphasizes Caroline Lee Hentz's and E. D. E. N. Southworth's manipulation of conventional sentimental devices in their early romances for the purpose of di...
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In the following essay, Scott documents the dissatisfaction of many Southern women with the restrictive roles assigned to them in the Old South.
Open complaint about their lot was not the custom am...
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In the following essay, originally delivered as an address in 1908, Smith surveys a number of enduring poems by minor pre-Civil War poets and analyzes the reasons for the lack of literary productivene...
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In the following essay, Bakker explores the theme of hesitant or repressed rebellion by women in the writings of Caroline Lee Hentz, Caroline Gilman, and Eliza Ann Dupuy.
In the romances of the fem...
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In the following essay, Woodell describes three unusual novels by the little-known Charleston writer F. Colburn Adams that attack Southern hypocrisy and the institution of slavery.
Francis Colburn ...
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In the following essay, Hedin concentrates on the new literary strategies of nineteenth-century slave narratives which grafted morality, political awareness, and irony to the simpler, eighteenth-centu...
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In the following essay, Doherty comments on Harriet Jacobs's skilled application of the narrative conventions of the popular sentimental novel to her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.
I...
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In the following essay, Yarborough contends that Frederick Douglass's reinterpretation and exaltation of a slave rebellion in his novella The Heroic Slave is subverted by the underlying prejudi...
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In the following essay, Cotterill disparagingly assesses the writing of the Old South, from newspaper journalism to fiction.
It is more than probable that in the field of literature the people of t...
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In the following excerpt, Holman stresses the economic and cultural grounds for the dearth of accomplished Southern literature during the years 1800 to 1865, seeing Edgar Allan Poe, William Gilmore Si...
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In the following essay, Simpson considers the development of the myth of the Old South as a spiritually redemptive community.
The Civil War, Richard M. Weaver says in his essay entitled “The...
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In the following essay, Werner presents an overview of early nineteenth-century Southern literature, arguing that the Old South played a crucial role in the cultural growth of the fledgling United Sta...
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In the following essay, Wimsatt surveys the mostly romantic prose fiction of the pre-Civil War American South.
Antebellum Americans, especially in the South, relished the popular romance as it had ...
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In the following essay, Thompson contrasts the typically regional focus of nineteenth-century Southern writers with that of Edgar Allan Poe, whose work consistently transcends the literary tropes and ...
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In the following essay, Cardwell presents the subject of dueling as an important element in the “aristocratic” culture of the Old South, one frequently treated by writers of the period.
...
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Two dozen white-columned antebellum mansions and other historic homes of Natchez will be open to the public during the city's annual Spring Pilgrimage, March 10-April 14.The homes include house mus...
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The Longwood Plantation in Natchez has been selected Mississippi's top architectural site by voters participating in a survey organized by the state chapter of the American Institute of Architects....
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Bored children, a tight budget, and spring break can equal parent desperation, but a little creativity and luck can turn that into a treasured childhood memory. A trip to nowhere in particular coul...
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In 2006 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York City
featured an exhibition by American
artist
Kara
Walker
titled "After the Deluge," which was inspired in part by the devastation wreaked th...
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It's lovely to visit a garden on a spring day, surrendering to the scents, colors, and the sounds of birds chirping or the breeze rustling a dogwood tree heavy with blossoms.But there's also someth...
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A month after Michael Berkow arrived from Los Angeles to become police chief in this city of moss-draped oaks and antebellum mansions, Savannah officials learned that he came with some baggage: a l...
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Just a few years ago, Nikia Wigfall needed only to drive to the nearby marshes to harvest the sweetgrass that she and other descendants of slaves weave into the beautiful baskets sold to tourists i...
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When Al Gore chose Joe Lieberman as his running mate, Jews were elated — and scared. Many worried that if he said or did anything wrong, everyone would blame the Jews. That never happened; th...
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Princeton, N.J., is well known for its university, but it’s acquiring a different reputation in the opera world—as the country’s classiest libret...
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Critical Essay by Thomas Nelson Page
Natchez homes on tour in annual event
