Southern literature Summary

In the following essay, first published in 1954, Welty discusses some general characteristics of Southern literature and praises the work of such modern novelists as William Faulkner, Katherine Anne P... Read more

In the following essay, Raper explores the special role of a sense of place in traditional Southern fiction and suggests that postmodern Southern writers have deliberately reacted against their locale... Read more

In the following essay, Suarez examines the poetry of James Dickey and Robert Penn Warren as representative of the modern South, pointing out that their poetry is both regional and highly individual. ... Read more

In the following essay, Gabbin focuses on the literary career of Sonia Sanchez, stressing her blending of political and personal, urban and rural elements in her works. Death is a five o'clock ... Read more

In the following essay, Dvorak explores the role of cooking as it relates to a sense of community, spiritual sustenance, women's friendships, and female identity in three Southern novels. The t... Read more

In the following essay, Cawelti presents an overview of Cormac McCarthy's career, stressing that his works connect the new Western and the new Southern literature genres through a concern for a... Read more

In the following essay, Chew presents an overview of Rita Mae Brown's novels and essays, focusing on her political consciousness and her treatment of social class and categories in her novels. ... Read more

In the following essay, Yaeger discusses Southern women writers' frequent use of physically grotesque characters in their works and emphasizes the latter's political role in “mapp... Read more

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... Read more

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 the ... Read more

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 So... Read more

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 dev... Read more

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. ... Read more

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. Th... Read more

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 literary t... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

In the following essay, Gwin suggests thematic affinities between Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and Mary H. Eastman's pro-slavery response Aunt Phil... Read more

In the following excerpt, Tracey examines the “double-proposal” novels of Caroline Lee Hentz as works that critique the position of privileged women in antebellum society while reinforci... Read more

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... Read more

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... Read more

In the following essay, Rubin surveys Southern literature of the post-Reconstruction period, concentrating on the local color movement, literary depictions of blacks, and the state of poetry. In 1873,... Read more

In the following essay, Richardson describes the work of the major local color writers of the New South. When the journalist Edward King visited New Orleans in early 1873 as representative of “... Read more

In the following excerpt, Howell summarizes modern historical assessments of the New South, focusing on such themes as Southern distinctiveness, identity, industrialization, economics, populism, and r... Read more

In the following essay, Rubin examines George Washington Cable's novel John March, Southerner as it illustrates the limitations of the genteel, local color tradition that dominated Southern fic... Read more

In the following essay, Shillingsburg studies representative works by Caroline Hentz, Grace King, and Kate Chopin as they reflect women's changing views in the late nineteenth-century American ... Read more

In the following excerpt, Gray addresses historical and biographical elements at work in the early fiction of Ellen Glasgow. Ellen Glasgow was reluctant to think of herself as a Southern writer. She w... Read more

In the following essay, MacKethan explores the rhetorical and structural techniques used by writers of the New South in their representation of old plantation myths. The literary phenomenon of the Old... Read more

In the following essay, Gebhard enumerates culturally subversive qualities in otherwise sentimental representations of white Southern gentlemen in the literature of the New South. [Colonel Grangerford... Read more

In the following essay, Ridgely studies the literature of a culturally-isolated South during the Reconstruction era. Hath not the morning dawned with added light? And shall not evening call another st... Read more

In the following essay, Long contends that Elizabeth Stuart Phelps's 1868 novel The Gates Ajar offers an early symbolic analysis of “the inadequacy of traditional belief systems” ... Read more

In the following essay, Tracey explicates E. D. E. N. Southworth's novel Britomarte, the Man-Hater as it portrays social and ideological disruptions in gender roles caused by the Civil War. E. ... Read more

In the following essay, Moore chronicles the correspondence of poet Paul Hamilton Hayne with author and critic James Maurice Thompson, particularly as their writing touches upon the theme of postwar r... Read more

In the following essay, Osthaus documents the career of William Tappan Thompson, an influential writer and Savannah journalist who voiced the opinions of conservative, white supremacist, and non-appea... Read more

In the following excerpt, Alexander discusses political continuity and historical change that occurred over the Civil War period. … It does not take one long to discover that not only is consen... Read more

In the following excerpt, Alexander discusses political continuity and historical change that occurred over the Civil War period. … It does not take one long to discover that not only is consen... Read more

In the following essay, Grammer examines the myth of the pastoral South as it is represented in the literature of the Civil War period and after. In June, 1862, as northern troops menaced Richmond, th... Read more

In the following essay, Ayers and Mittendorf consider the effects of the Civil War on the lives of Southerners and the literature of the American South. The Civil War was the most important event in t... Read more

In the following essay, Eaton evaluates the impact of the Civil War on Southern culture. The founding of the Southern Confederacy, young Sidney Lanier predicted, would inaugurate a new and glorious er... Read more

In the following essay, Turner comments on the diversity of the American South, and on the need for further study of lesser Southern authors of the post-Civil War period. It would be possible, I suppo... Read more