The History of Southern Literature
Kramer, Victor A.
creased competitiveness a self-defeating policy where competitors cancel out each other's gains? These questions are vital to our well-being but, unfortunately, the evidence is unclear. The...
...It should be noted tha~ the editor's"Introduction" clearly indicates the difficulties of treating recent literature in this manner...
...The volume's relative success is proof of mind over matter...
...T. Patrick Hill T HE MORE things change, the more they stay the same...
...3.95 SEASONS OF STRENGTH A Christian Passages, the sequel to the Whiteheads' Chnstion Life Pattern5 explores the process of development, growth, and maturity in our religious hves...
...A SLIMMER JOURNEY OF TRANSFORMATION JUNE 15-20, 1986 At the COLLEGE OF LAKE FOREST Mid-June at Lake Forest College, north of Chicago in Lake Forest, Illinois, Spiritual Advisory Council will conduct its 1 lth Annual Summer Conference on the theme "A Journey of Transformation" with a program of lectures, workshops, special interest events and fellowship...
...What emerges is something far more complex than an oldfashioned literary history...
...The organization of the book is chronological: four major divisions cover years from 1607 to 1860, 18611920, 1920-1950, and 1951-1982, successively the colonial and antebellum accomplishments, the years after, the Renascence, and the contemporary movement...
...l pfincip!es, 'and the in, . . . . ."~' ,"' ' ':.',~.::' ' ,i~i~.P, Simpson I III gionalists, editors, teachers -- provide still more insights into the complexity of a modern Southern literature...
...516) 423-0499...
...We know all this in vague outline, like the faded memory of an old photograph...
...We must increase savings by placing controls on too easy access to consumer credit...
...to make judgments about this literature in terms of regional origins -- all this is an extremely large order...
...The pieces in this history range from listings of the mediocre to philosophical speculations which account for the significance of the South as the tragic non-meeting ground of minds turned inward and away from others who have frequently been denied their otherness...
...Sensible, but it probably won't work...
...and as "politics in the Southern states became increasingly the politics of a slave society, religion and the state became unofficially yet closely idenl~ ed in the South, and the Southern Protestant denominations severed . themselves from their ties with their "respective counterparts in the "NoTthertl state...
...Sections on the New Negro Renaissance, poetry, criticism, memoirs of war in biography and fiction, popular fiction, "the passion of craft" in writers such as Katherine Anne Porter, Caroline Gordon, and Andrew Lytle tell of the art...
...While this is a morally important opportunity it is politically intractable...
...Two marginal subjects haunt this volume, and while never examined in great detail these become the unsaid locus of the project: religion and race, or, perhaps, the modification of these subjects according to the literary demands of a developing Southern consciousness...
...Figures for 1981 show the population of Ireland to have been just under 3.5 million, a net increase, in the decade 1971-1981, of some 14.5 percent...
...Victor A. Kramer F OUR centuries of Southei'n literature...
...Louisiana State University, $29.95, 626 pp...
...INTERNATIONALLY RESPECTED FACULTY AND GUEST SPEAKERS An excellent resident faculty is complemented by outstanding guest lecturers...
...Timothy Brewer, a naturalist and herbalist, who will provide insights into natural healing using spiritual methods...
...4.50 and [lai/~l)~,'hitd~'ad of today...
...there is not enough space...
...seventy separate essays...
...Phone or write for information to: SPIRITUAL ADVISORY COUNCIL 2965 WEST STATE ROAD 434 * SUITE 300 LONGWOOD, FL 32779.305/774-6151 IN THE CHICAGO AREA: Phone: 312/676-4900 LECTURES 9 WORKSHOPS 9 MUSIC Grady), local color as well as significant single writers, including Kate Chopin and Mark Twain, are the topics of the separate essays...
...For example, if we grant Thurow his premise that we "must engage in a massive mobilization to build a world-cla~s American economy," his program makes technical sense...
...That myth disguises the underlying class differences of a capitalist economy...
...6.95...
...Many others will participate in an experiential week that begins on Sunday evening, June 15th, and lasts until Friday afternoon, June 20th...
...Such a framework, which I am suggesting for this encyclopedic reference work, is not featured by the editors, but it is present in many of the essays...
...the writing is sometimes abbreviated, even turgid...
...And later when "Plantation Fiction" thrived, notes Lucinda H. MacKethan, "slavery, it seemed, had to be upheld though it could not easily be subjected to close scrutiny in the field of literature...
...Essays on the agrarians, modern drama, and finally four writers who demand separate treatment -- Thomas Wolfe, William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, and Richard Wright -- fill out this part of the study...
...The best economic policies will be of little use if there is no vision of a commitment to a good society...
...If Simpson's understanding is true -that the dominant undercurrent in the first 250 years of Southern literary history is the dilemmas of slaveholders being held captive by their slaves -- then the unfreeing of these "mind-forged manacles" is the major subject of the concluding century and of our consciousness...
...Unfortunately, those who are prospering under present economic policies have little incentive to cooperate with those who are not...
...Unfortunately, economic disaster may be necessary before we take Heilbroner and Thurow seriously enough to begin building a new, viable social consensus...
...The short essays which constitute the final division of the book are attempts to identify the significant writers from 1951 forward...
...Image and Inspiration for the Catholic of 1986...
...scores of scholars...
...to see it in terms of its changing relationshipg to time and place...
...Thurow's policies certainly seem reasonable...
...As Simpson ~otes, this demonstrates "the phenomenon which Hegel defined as 'the secularization of the spiritual.' " A labor system "of fortuitous historical origins was identified with the operation of God's will in history...
...Given these demands, this book does a quite good job of imposing its order...
...As a result, the Irish 11 April 1986:219 EARN A MASTERS IN THEOLOGY DURING SUMMER VACATION...
...What continues to be alarming about these figures is that a high proportion of that force remains in agriculture -which has been declining, in the same twenty-year period, by 44 percent, and is expected to decline by another quarter in the coming decade...
...7.95 IN HIS FOOTSTEPS Father Ralph DiOrio offers a wonderful opportunity to reflect upon the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord, with an engaging and inspiring little book that follows the historic and holy Way of the Cross...
...cent...
...In Marxist terms, class war has replaced social collaboration...
...4.95 DOUBLEDAY ) IMAGE BOOKSand, after Emancipation, enslaved by the imagined memories of a happy time before the War -- such constitutes the stuff of a special literature...
...Books that raised questions and challenged the status quo were already appearing a hundred years ago, among them George Washington Cable, critics in academe, perceptive black writers like Charles Waddell Chesnutt...
...Such additions make it certain that the editors knew what they'were about, and that they realized any interpretation as extensive as this would require more qualification.' To view literary history in terms of its complex historical unfolding...
...The utility and beauty of this book is that it restores images in graphic detail...
...All significant authors and cultura~ trends are examined, the major ones in some detail...
...Something more than an economic program is needed...
...The only social consensus holding us together as a nation is our belief that a fundamental purpose of life is ever 'greater consumption...
...Agee doesn't discuss his "four planes of communication" early in that book, but rather midway...
...Inevitably 'problems will surface here...
...In the case of Ireland, however, this increase was the result of steady growth, between 1961 and 1982, from 1.06 million to 1.28 million in the labor force...
...As we stop to meditate and offer a special prayer at each Station, we discover deeper commitment and renewed faith...
...The format of the book, for example, provides individual chapters within its first division only for Captain John Smith, William Byrd, William Gilmore Simms, and Edgar Allan Poe...
...FLEXIBLE SCHEDULES The School offers: Fall, Spring, and Summer-only study options, three and six week summer courses, four day weeks, and day and evening classes...
...A sensitive, sensible book that enables us to meet our daily troubles courageously, and overcome them without faltering...
...There are many technical solutions that make sense...
...COSTS THAT AREN'T UNGODLY Rock-bottom room and board on a beautiful campus located a short walk from beaches and fifty minutes from Manhattan Minimum tuition...
...The stagflation problem of the 1970s was the result of the social conflict stemming out of the inability to bring about widespread agreement on the distribution of the fruits of production...
...All the essays are designed to make readers aware of the vast sweep of Southern literature...
...For further information, call or wnte: Dr William Vendley, Assooate Dean, Seminary of the Immaculate Conception Huntington, Long Island, N.Y...
...More importantly, it portrays a developing consciousness of Southern literary history complicated by the very tensions whicll generated it...
...and six editors have produced a usable history which provides basic information about an exinternational competitiveness and slow productivity growth seems naive at best...
...The odd events in early Southern literary history take off from this wedding, and the first section examines this fact...
...but, rather, political economic ones...
...A simplistic view of Southern culture a~ essentially defensive would not be adequate...
...errors creep in...
...In effect in the . "~f~h tile" secMar State, conceived ~'l'.~ .a...
...Insightful and illuminann 9, with reflective exercises that will help us to understand our role and our responsibilities in "the adult ,,-i journey with God...
...I BOOK OF HD,I '~' i t:uc ne ,11 P u , , , , _ ..., . A portable, treasury of more ~,~t~'n't~.},.'~ ~ ~:~ THE RULE OF SAINT AUGUSTINE than 170 favorite prayers, ~~ILI~"~ l ~ r ,, As applicable to the 20th century bath modern and traditional, ~,z...
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...as ~t was to the early Christians, this selected by M Basil Penning- ~ t~' ~'i't!~ ~N~ | l ~ brief but classic guide presents the ton...
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...Guilt about these subjects, even contortions, may be the undercurrent which pulls these widely diverse essays forward...
...In 1982, Ireland experienced an unemployment rate of 12.8 pertic statements are made: Famous Men is not a "documentary...
...It may have been true, as William P. Trent once argued, that in the quarter century after the War "there existed no native criticism of Southern life and letters worthy of the name...
...and the desire for a manageable volume would seem to make impossible a committee project such as this...
...If we are forced to give it up, even for a short period, we will have to deal with serious equity issues of who sacrifices...
...The chapters of the second division study the period 1861 to 1920...
...The program will ,take place in the college classrooms and living accommodations are provided in the college dorms and food service in the college cafeteria -- all at very reasonable prices...
...and there is no "dream sequence" section of A Death in the Family...
...Again what is valuable about this history is not the accumulation of details -- which are many and fascinating -- but rather the revelation that there was a countermemory slowly working to reveal itself in Southern literature...
...The framework of the first part, 1607 -to 1860, under the guiding hand of Lewis P. Simpson, provides a thoughtful way of introducing the volume as a whole...
...There is no one best way...
...The rate of employment growth during the period 1970-1980 was 1.3 percent -- well above the 0.2 percent average for the European Economic Community...
...Thurow's belief that a new social consensus can be built around the issues of Dixie's trove THE HISTORY OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE Edited by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., et al...
...I tremely complex subject, and in so doing they also provide a living document which reveals the difficulty of such a project, and the irony of achieving any balanced presentation in such short space because obviously as many questions are raised as answered...
...The dream of a classical age of Southern literature was itself history, but the legacy of the Civil War experience would be invested many times over in the years to come," argues Elisabeth Muhlenfeld...
...The important questions are not technical economic ones -- will consumption controls or a value-added tax do the job...
...A new translation home, in church, in times of ~. l.t,Ul,~ll ,, from the original Latin text, with need and in times of celebra- an extensive commentary that tion--a devotional book for ~L~I ~]al~nB'hild~"ad elucidates Augustine for the faithful every occasion...
...11743 Tel...
...No economic program will work unless a new social consensus can be negotiated and agreed upon by the different social classes...
...Handy enough to carry Ir~ 'IJ~, U~ L~ 'mL'J ~ w,i_-_ concise spiritual directions of a everywhere, it's ideal for use at i; |~ ChristianNe~v\'i~i~ ~n~ 0l'~,d~ ""~ ' ~i1~ giant of the faith...
...In fact their prosperity has been purchased at the price of crushing organized labor, maintaining high levels of unemployment, and eliminating or reducing many of the economic security provisions developed under the New Deal/Keynesian consensus...
...Neither Reagan's self-interested individualism nor Thurow' s"mobilization to build a world-class American economy" can provide the basis for a new social consensus...
...Slaveholders, enslaved by their slaves Commonweal: 216THE TROUBLE WITH BEING HUMAN The honesty, insight, and compassion characteristic of Eugene Kennedy permeate a series of brief, targeted discussions of the basic problems of living that afflict us all...
...Also, the book includes a bibliographical appendix, "The Study of Southern Literature," and another appendix "The Black Academy and ~outhern Literature," meant to round out some deficiencies...
...Rubin...
...Featured speakers will include Marcel Vogel, senior scientist for IBM, who will present a spiritual insight through science and the use of crystals, and Dr...
...It shows how the South, hindered by its inwardness, yet brooding on its fate, has produced a literature far beyond the dreams of its most wildly imaginative writers during the three centuries preceding ours...
...Three hundred forty pages of text celebrate this explosion of craft and imagination: Richmond, Charleston, Kentucky, Tennessee, and names too numerous to mention set the stage...
...The real test of economic policies is their political economic acceptability...
...Much of this early literature was ultimately envisioned, at least by many propagandists, as "the coalescence of the secular and religious visions of the institution of slavery in the pro-slavery argument...
...Caution is advised in putting too much faith in the accuracy of all the short essays which constitute the final division of this investigation...
...Other sections -- on black novelists, reCommonweal: 218' i~tA~,theJust~catio~ of chattel slav, "eiy b~came common in Southern :~" pulpits," the secular politics of slavery became a spiritual cause...
...In three pages on "James Agee," at least three problemaInvoluntary journeys I II ENIGRANTS AND EIILES IRELAND AND THE IRISH EXODUS TO NORTH AMERICA Kerhy A. Miller Oxford, $35, 684 pp...
...Other essays handle broad topics such as humor, poetry, and fiction...
...The editors are to be commended for allowing the many authors to approach their subjects with an honesty which collectively reveals tensions which have contributed to the development of the largest and most significant body of American literature...
...But at the turn of the century, Trent's criticism and that of others such as Walter Hines Page (1855-1918) provided ideas which rejected what Wilbur J. Cash, in 1941, called the " 'savage ideal' -- that ideal 'whereunder dissent and variety are completely suppressed.' " The story that follows in the third and fourth parts of this history is better known: the Southern Renascence and its continuation in modified form into the present moment...
...In the section which bridges the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, humor, realism, boosterism (Henry W. ANNUAL NATIONAL RETREAT LAKE FOREST ILLINOIS COLLEGE r~ Consider...
Vol. 113 • April 1986 • No. 7
