A Companion to the Literature and Culture of

From slave narratives to the Civil War, and from country music to Southern sport, this Companion is the definitive guide to the literature and culture of the American South. Includes discussion of the visual arts, music, society, history, and politics in the region Combines treatment of major literary works and historical events with a survey of broader themes, movements and issues Explores the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Huston, Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, as well as those - black and white, male and female - who are writing now Co-edited by the esteemed scholar Richard Gray, author of the acclaimed volume, A History of American Literature (Blackwell, 2003)

Richard Gray is Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of Essex. His books include The Literature of Memory: Modern Writers of the American South, Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region (which won the C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature), American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography, Southern Aberrations: Writers of the American South and the Problems of Regionalism, and A History of American Literature. He is also editor of a number of collections and anthologies, and a regular reviewer for various newspapers and journals, including the Times Literary Supplement and the Literary Review. He is the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

Owen Robinson is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Essex. He is the author of several articles on the novels of William Faulkner, and is editing A Routledge Guide to Light in August. He is currently working on writing centred on New Orleans, and on reader-writer relations in African American literature.

Acknowledgments

x

Notes on Contributors

xii

List of Plates

xviii

PART I Introduction

1

(26)

1 Writing Southern Cultures

3

(24)

Richard Gray

PART II Themes and Issues

27

(326)

2 The First Southerners: Jamestown's Colonists as Exemplary Figures

29

(14)

Mary C. Fuller

3 Slave Narratives

43

(15)

Jerry Phillips

4 Plantation Fiction

58

(18)

John M. Grammer

5 The Slavery Debate

76

(17)

Susan-Mary Grant

6 Southern Writers and the Civil War

93

(17)

Susan-Mary Grant

7 Visualizing the Poor White

110

(20)

Stuart Kidd

8 Southern Appalachia

130

(18)

Linda Tate

9 The Southern Literary Renaissance

148

(18)

Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr.

10 The Native-American South

166

(19)

Mick Gidley and Ben Gidley

11 Southern Music

185

(18)

John White

12 Country Music

203

(18)

Barbara Ching

13 The Civil Rights Debate

221

(17)

Richard H. King

14 Southern Religion(s)

238

(17)

Charles Reagan Wilson

15 African-American Fiction and Poetry

255

(25)

R.J. Ellis

16 Southern Drama

280

(17)

Mark Zelinsky and Amy Cuomo

17 Sports in the South

297

(20)

Diane Roberts

18 The South Through Other Eyes

317

(18)

Helen Taylor

19 The South in Popular Culture

335

(18)

Allison Graham

PART III Individuals and Movements

353

(236)

20 Edgar Allan Poe

355

(15)

Henry Claridge

21 Southwestern Humor

370

(18)

John M. Grammer

22 Mark Twain

388

(15)

Peter Stoneley

23 Ellen Glasgow

403

(17)

Julius Rowan Raper

24 Fugitives and Agrarians

420

(16)

Andrew Hook

25 William Faulkner

436

(18)

Richard Godden

26 Literature of the African-American Great Migration

454

(18)

Kate Fullbrook

27 Zora Neale Hurston

472

(14)

Will Brantley

28 Flannery O'Connor

486

(16)

Susan Castillo

29 Eudora Welty

502

(16)

Jan Nordby Gretlund

30 Oral Culture and Southern Fiction

518

(18)

Jill Terry

31 Recent and Contemporary Women Writers in the South

536

(16)

Sharon Monteith

32 The South in Contemporary African-American Fiction

552

(19)

A. Robert Lee

33 Writing in the South Now

571

(18)

Matthew Guinn

PART IV Afterword

589

(19)

34 Searching for Southern Identity

591

(17)

James C. Cobb

Index

608

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A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials