Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> American - Regional

The humor of the Old South -- tales, almanac entries, turf reports, historical sketches, gentlemen's essays on outdoor sports, profiles of local characters -- flourished between 1830 and 1860. The genre's popularity and influence can be traced in the works of major southern writers such as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Harry Crews, as well as in contemporary popular culture focusing on the rural South.

This collection of essays includes some of the past twenty five years' best writing on the subject, as well as ten new works bringing fresh...

In 1917 when H. L. Mencken belittled the South as -almost as sterile artistically, intellectually and culturally as the Sahara Desert, - he set off a reaction that is still reverberating today. The first issue of The Double Dealer out of New Orleans in 1921 pronounced it -high time, we believe, for some doughty clear-visioned penmen to emerge from the sodden marshes of Southern literature.- Hundreds did.
Supplanting the romantic novelists of the Old South, the new Southern fiction writer displayed an enormous diversity of interest and daring technique. Indeed, Southern fiction...

Eudora Welty (1909-2001), in her writing and in her conversation, had a dazzling and ironic wit. Many friends remember the laughter she provoked through her sense of the absurd. Early Escapades explores the initial manifestations of her comic and creative energy, from the poems of her adolescence to the promising parodies and caricatures she wrote and drew as a young adult. The compilation includes pen-and-ink drawings as well as caricatures, limericks, poems, essays, editorial pieces, and society notes written by the young Welty. The earliest example of her work here is a...

In 1952, Faulkner noted the exceptional nature of the South when he characterized it as -the only really authentic region in the United States, because a deep indestructible bond still exists between man and his environment.-

The essays collected in Faulkner and the Ecology of the South explore Faulkner's environmental imagination, seeking what Ann Fisher-Wirth calls the -ecological counter-melody- of his texts. -Ecology- was not a term in common use outside the sciences in Faulkner's time. However, the word -environment- seems to have held deep meaning for Faulkner. Often he...

In Michael Millgate's essay he writes that -To see the places where an author lived and walked, and typed; to see what he daily saw, smell what he smelled; experience the resources of his native climate: these things have the fascination of biography, and they can illuminate the work, enrich one's individual apprehension of that work, in much the same way good biography does.-

William Faulkner's native climate was the small north Mississippi town of Oxford after which he patterned his mythical Yoknapatawpha County. Each year the University of Mississippi, located in Oxford, sponsors a...

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) remarked on several occasions that the farther south one went in America, the more congenial life became. Though he sojourned elsewhere, he embraced the South, the region of his birth, as his creative homeland. Few writers have been more closely connected with it than he.

Combining his words with photographs, this biographical album reveals Williams's closeness with the American South, and especially with his beloved New Orleans. Williams was born in Mississippi and lived there with his family until he was seven. Thomas Lanier Williams, who became...

At Home Abroad brings attention to a little known period in the career of America's most notable humorist. It follows the writer-performer Down Under on a journey through thirty lectures in colonial Australia and New Zealand.

This appealing book is a daily account of Twain's activities and is based upon his notebooks his letters, and newspaper reports that appeared both in cities and in the provinces. Shillingsburg offers serious evaluation of Australasian criticism that appeared in reviews of Twain's performances, in editorials about humor, and in the critical reception of...

"New England was founded consciously, and in no fit of absence of mind," observed historian Samuel Eliot Morison on the establishment of the Bay Colony in 1630 on the narrow, mountainous Shawmut peninsula of what became Massachusetts. That self-conscious presence of mind has endured for four centuries. Boston has been shaped and sustained by observation, imagination, and interpretation. As a result, the evolving vision of Boston has yielded a compelling literary record.

In this wide-ranging anthology, Shaun O'Connell includes a generous sampling of those who have recorded, revised, and...

With contributions from Robert G. Barrier, Robert Beuka, Thomas Arvold Bjerre, Jean W. Cash, Robert Donahoo, Richard Gaughran, Gary Hawkins, Darlin' Neal, Keith Perry, Katherine Powell, John A. Staunton, and Jay Watson

Larry Brown is noted for his subjects--rural life, poverty, war, and the working class--and his spare, gritty style. Brown's oeuvre spans several genres and includes acclaimed novels (Dirty Work, Joe, Father and Son, The Rabbit Factory, and A Miracle of Catfish), short story collections (Facing the Music, Big Bad Love),...

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was one of the most acclaimed, popular, and controversial American playwrights of the twentieth century. The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are all considered classics of modern theatre, and their characters and situations are iconic representations of the postwar South.

In his early years, Williams concentrated his literary talents just as intently on poetry as on plays. Watching over him during this critical learning period was his close friend William Jay Smith (b. 1918), who met Williams in...

Louisiana writer Tim Gautreaux (b. 1947) writes fiction that mixes equal parts dry humor, tall tales, and deep tragedy. His stories and novels of working-class Acadiana portray lives of inimitably poignant love, loss, and longing. The depth and complexity of Gautreaux's writing invite scholarly appraisals as well, as critics mine the richness of his moral vision. These interviews reveal the intensity of his sense of place, his deep connection to the mechanical and working world, his commitment to the craft of writing, and his Catholic view that has been shaped by Flannery O'Connor and...

William Faulkner wrote during a tumultuous period in southern racial consciousness, between the years of the enactment of Jim Crow and the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the South. Throughout the writer's career, racial paradigms were in flux, and these shifting notions are reflected in Faulkner's prose. Faulkner's fiction contains frequent questions about the ways in which white Americans view themselves with regard to race along with challenges to the racial codes and standards of the region, and complex portrayals of the interactions between blacks and whites. Throughout his...