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The Fugitive Group: A Literary History
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- GenresLiterary Criticism
277 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
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December 13, 2011
This was an insightful work on the Fugitives (with a few reservations). The gist of the book is that the distinctive contribution of the Fugitive group had its origin in the fading traditional society of the South, grounded by rigorous training in the classics. With that foundation, and with the other critical ingredient of a strongly intellectual and congenial society of friends, they produced at least four important literary figures of the twentieth century (Ransom, Davidson, Tate, Warren; and they went, of course, far beyond poetry, but this book is about the Fugitive stage of their work).
As these four developed as writers they naturally turned to examining aesthetical theory, the role of a poet in society, the kind of society necessary to poetry, and so on. These reflections led all four of them, more or less independently, to renew their identity at a time when the "New South" ideology was beginning to make headway against the Southern tradition. In doing so they also made the transition from merely literary to more broadly ethical, cultural, and religious leadership in the South. They seem to have been a sort of Inklings group for their region, only (alas) falling well short of the lively faith and orthodoxy of the British bunch. In their Fugitive and Agrarian capacities, at least, these men drew fairly consciously on the Christian tradition, but they were not personally or fully orthodox Christians. At least Tate, however (in company with a startling number of authors of the Southern renascence) eventually went Roman Catholic.
I'm afraid I don't understand literary-speak well enough to explain to you how Fugitive verse differs in qualitatively Southern ways from other modern verse, but Cowan and the Fugitives themselves say it is so. I am happy to take their word for it. Here is Cowan's conclusion to this book:
"As poets, the Fugitives had held the simple aim of developing a craft; but their dedication to that purpose had led them ever farther into an exploration of their heritage. They had found that their true task was not the creation of an ideal world but the discovery of a real one, independent of their own thinking; they had learned that a genuine culture, whatever its moral flaws, is an analogue of something nobler toward which the human spirit aspires but which it can grasp only through submission to the actual. Hence, their poetry made available to themselves a body of techniques, a language, and a core of belief from a traditional society which, at its very moment of change, could by these means be transmuted into permanence" (p. 257).
As these four developed as writers they naturally turned to examining aesthetical theory, the role of a poet in society, the kind of society necessary to poetry, and so on. These reflections led all four of them, more or less independently, to renew their identity at a time when the "New South" ideology was beginning to make headway against the Southern tradition. In doing so they also made the transition from merely literary to more broadly ethical, cultural, and religious leadership in the South. They seem to have been a sort of Inklings group for their region, only (alas) falling well short of the lively faith and orthodoxy of the British bunch. In their Fugitive and Agrarian capacities, at least, these men drew fairly consciously on the Christian tradition, but they were not personally or fully orthodox Christians. At least Tate, however (in company with a startling number of authors of the Southern renascence) eventually went Roman Catholic.
I'm afraid I don't understand literary-speak well enough to explain to you how Fugitive verse differs in qualitatively Southern ways from other modern verse, but Cowan and the Fugitives themselves say it is so. I am happy to take their word for it. Here is Cowan's conclusion to this book:
"As poets, the Fugitives had held the simple aim of developing a craft; but their dedication to that purpose had led them ever farther into an exploration of their heritage. They had found that their true task was not the creation of an ideal world but the discovery of a real one, independent of their own thinking; they had learned that a genuine culture, whatever its moral flaws, is an analogue of something nobler toward which the human spirit aspires but which it can grasp only through submission to the actual. Hence, their poetry made available to themselves a body of techniques, a language, and a core of belief from a traditional society which, at its very moment of change, could by these means be transmuted into permanence" (p. 257).
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