...This chapter offers a reading of Eudora Welty’s novel Ponder Heart, arguing that it is her oddest book and that it is a deliberate collection of every tawdry cliché of southern literature. It contends that the novel does not feel like parody because it does not protect itself...

... of the finest exemplars of minimalist, raw writing of the contemporary South. This book considers the writer’s full body of work, placing it in the contexts of southern literature, Mississippi writing, and literary work about the working class. Collectively, the chapters explore such subjects as Brown’s...

... Faulkner William Southern literature William Faulkner Thomas Sutpen Southern literature women William Faulkner’s portrayal of women has attracted heated debate ever since Maxwell Geismar charged the Mississippi writer with misogyny more than forty years ago. ¹ Albert Guerard, for one, has...

... to show the immediate, real world sociopolitical engagement of literature. Hence, Welty’s story marks a return of racial politics to southern literature that are no longer avoidable, despite Welty’s own pleas to refrain from political crusading. civil rights Jackson Mississippi National Book Award New...

... student and the scholar of southern literature become increasingly aware of how much of that basic material was already a part of the literary tradition of the South before Faulkner appeared on the scene. The essay also considers the extent of the influence of the film on Faulkner's fiction. Dryden John...

... distinctive as a region, southern identity became a less stable construction, and southern literature became more consistent with mainstream American literature. Faulkner William Hurt R Douglas modernism O’Connor Flannery Tennessee Valley Authority World War I Goldfield David labor manufacturing...

...This chapter examines the legacy of southern frontier humor beyond the southern local color tradition by focusing on the trickster. It shows the reemergence of the trickster as con artist in contemporary southern literature, thus continuing the legacy of a Euro-American counterpart, a literary...

... Tate, “traditionally, southern literature has been understood to be that written by white men and, on rare occasions, by white women—and, in almost all cases, by and about white southerners of the upper middle class.” This chapter looks at three new voices who write about the Rough South...

... recalls that growing up in Grundy, she consciously tried to conform to the image of an aspiring southern “lady.” Initially Smith wrote about romantic and foreign subjects, but after encountering Eudora Welty's work in a southern literature course, she realized the importance of writing from one's...

...This chapter discusses Brad Watson's 2002 novel The Heaven of Mercury, which lies squarely amid the matrix of evolving and competing Souths. It has recently become standard at conferences and in journals devoted to southern literature to ask whether southern literature itself...

...—separated by divisions of race and gender—they collectively made significant contributions to modernist and southern literature. After a discussion of the three authors and their works, brief summaries of the twelve essays follow. Faulkner William Moorhead Rod Polk Noel Welty Eudora Wright Richard...

...The formalized study of southern literature in the mid-twentieth century is an example of scholars formalizing the study of modernist aesthetics in order to suppress leftist politics and sentiments in literature and art. This formalized, institutional study was initiated in a climate in which...

...Peculiar Whiteness argues for deeper consideration of the complexities surrounding the disparate treatment of poor whites throughout southern literature and attests to how broad such experiences have been. While the history of prejudice against this group is not the same...

... of her work. This collection seeks to disrupt those habits, reconsidering a giant of southern literature in a range of ways. The essays featured here begin with new methodologies, including object-oriented ontology and "crip-queer" theory, among others. Some essays in this collection introduce new...

..., Hightower offers a useful way of reading and interpreting U.S. southern literature in general and Faulkner’s fiction in particular. The chapter examines “the pathogenic nucleus of Hightower’s suffering” and the psychoanalytic aspects of his subject formation. It looks at the Civil War frock coat...

... in particular. Benson accurately characterizes McCarthy's work as a critical shift in the representation of lower-class characters in southern literature. McCarthy's focus on exploring and illuminating the lives of those often called “white trash” suggests a direct and important link between his work...

... also sees himself or herself as being different. Athas Daphne Cather Willa Giovanni Nikki Hellman Lillian Kelley Edith Sanchez Sonia Faulkner William Glasgow Ellen O’Connor Flannery Southern literature Warren Robert Penn Welty Eudora Wright Richard Alexander Margaret Walker Brown Rita Mae...

... contexts of southern literature. By setting her novel in south Louisiana, Chopin was also engaging issues critical to southern identity. Chopin Kate Simms William Gilmore Southern literature Cable George W Stowe Harriet Beecher Kate Chopin southern literature southern writers women authors southern...

...This chapter examines the transatlantic friendship between Eudora Welty and Elizabeth Bowen, which provides invaluable insights into the aesthetic and intercultural transactions between Irish and southern literature, specifically through their oeuvre of short stories and their critical insights...