It should be no surprise then that when the Agrarians turned to literary criticism, they avoided the matter of context. In the “New Criticism,” the term applied to their school of thought, analysis was text, text, text, never intent, never context. It wasn’t a bad school of thought. There is a great deal to understand about literature when narrowing in upon the words and their architecture, without always seeking authorization from the author or the politics of the time and place. But how convenient for writers of the Southern gentry to not have to acknowledge the scorched earth and beaten
...more
