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New Perspectives on the South
Twentieth-Century Southern Literature
By World War II, the Southern Renaissance had established itself as one of the most significant literary events of the century. Southern writers of succeeding generations have carried on and expanded upon that tradition. The story of this phenomenal flowering is the substance of Twentieth-Century Southern Literature.
Though the burgeoning of realistic and local-color writing during the first two decades of the century was a sign of things to come, as J.A. Bryant demonstrates, the period between the two world wars was a crucial one for the South's literary development. A literary revival in Richmond came to fruition. At Vanderbilt University a group of young men led by John Crowe Ransom produced The Fugitive, a remarkable magazine that published some of the century's best verse in its brief run. The publication and widespread recognition of Faulkner (among others) inaugurated the great flood of southern writing that was to follow in novels, short stories, poetry, and plays.
Out of the Vanderbilt group grew an agrarian movement championing the values that would underlie much of the literature to follow and the New Criticism that would transform the study and teaching of literature for decades. Developments after World War II included the addition of writing programs at colleges and universities and the emergence into prominence of women and black writers in significant numbers.
Bonded by a strong sense of place and of familial relationships, southern writers have plumbed the depths and explored the reaches of their regional consciousness to create an extraordinary body of literature.
Though the burgeoning of realistic and local-color writing during the first two decades of the century was a sign of things to come, as J.A. Bryant demonstrates, the period between the two world wars was a crucial one for the South's literary development. A literary revival in Richmond came to fruition. At Vanderbilt University a group of young men led by John Crowe Ransom produced The Fugitive, a remarkable magazine that published some of the century's best verse in its brief run. The publication and widespread recognition of Faulkner (among others) inaugurated the great flood of southern writing that was to follow in novels, short stories, poetry, and plays.
Out of the Vanderbilt group grew an agrarian movement championing the values that would underlie much of the literature to follow and the New Criticism that would transform the study and teaching of literature for decades. Developments after World War II included the addition of writing programs at colleges and universities and the emergence into prominence of women and black writers in significant numbers.
Bonded by a strong sense of place and of familial relationships, southern writers have plumbed the depths and explored the reaches of their regional consciousness to create an extraordinary body of literature.
- GenresNonfiction
280 pages, Hardcover
First published October 2, 1997
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