Terms for Southern Literature

Agrarianism

• The belief that society and daily life should be structured around the cultivation of the soil

• Urban life, capitalism, and technology destroy human dignity and independence while also encouraging vice and moral weakness

Fugitive Poets

• Group of poets and critics centered at Vanderbilt University in the early 1920s.

• John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren

• Created The Fugitive magazine they as an outlet for their writing.

Lost Cause

American pseudohistorical myth that argues the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on state’s rights, not slavery.

New Criticism

• School of criticism which emerged primarily in the South

• Argued that critics had paid too much attention to the biographical and historical contexts of a work of literature.

• New Critics advocated a focus on “the thing itself”–the language and
  the structural and formal qualities of the poem, novel, play, or story with which the critic was concerned.

• Foundation on NC is close reading

Old South

• Refers to the romantic and sentimental myth of what the South once was.

• portrays the “plantation legend”- slavery as a benevolent, paternal institution from which blacks and whites benefited equally

Paternalism

• To act like a father

• generally, refers to the attitude of many white southerners toward African Americans 

  • “Slaves needed white masters”

Reconstruction

• Period immediately following the Civil War- federal gov’t attempted to force the former Confederate states to govern themselves according to the laws and customs of the rest of the United States

• African Americans were elected to serve as legislators and governors in southern state

regionalism

• Writing that emphasizes the importance of a regional setting and tradition to individuals’ lives.

• Regional writing tends to focus on issues or experiences that are native to the place

revolt against the village

• Theme through which many writers criticized their own society for its crudeness, materialism, and repression

• refers more generally to early-twentieth-century changes in society (mass media, mobile)
  

southern gothic

• Style of writing marked by southern settings and characters which are dark, mysterious, or grotesque

• Disturb or question the “normal” expectations of their readers

stream of consciousness

• Attempts to portray the inner workings of a character’s mind by cataloging or describing the character’s thoughts and ideas in rapid succession and without any interpretation or explanation by an outside narrator