Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> American - Regional

"The Outer Bands" is a first collection of poems from Andres Montoya prize-winner Gabriel Gomez. The book is an expansive examination of language and landscape, voice and memory, where the balance between experimentation and tradition coexist. The poems realize a reconciliation between the writer s voice and the voice of witness, wonder, and tragedy; a dialogue between two worlds that employ an equally paradoxical imagery of the American Southwest and the marshes of Southern Louisiana. The book concludes with its namesake poem, The Outer Bands, a twenty-eight-day chronicle of the days...

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 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...

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...

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),...

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...