Inventing Southern Literature

by Michael Kreyling

"I take...an outward route, arguing that the Agrarian project was and must be seen as a willed campaign on the part of one elite to establish and control 'the South' in a period of intense cultural maneuvering. The principal organizers of I'll Take My Stand knew full well there were other 'Souths' than the one they touted; they deliberately presented a fabricated South as the one and only real thing." In Inventing Southern Literature Michael Kreyling casts a penetrating ray upon the traditional canon of southern literature and questions the modes by which it was created. He finds that it was, indeed, an invention rather than a creation. In the 1930s the foundations were laid by the Fugitive-Agrarian group, a band of poet-critics that wished not only to design but also to control the southern cultural entity in a conservative political context. From their heyday to the present, Kreyling investigates the historical conditions under which literary and cultural critics have invented "the South" and how they have chosen its representations. Through his study of these choices, Kreyling argues that interested groups have shaped meanings that preserve "a South" as "the South." As the Fugitive-Agrarians molded the region according to their definition in I'll Take My Stand, they professed to have developed a critical method that disavowed any cultural or political intent or content, a claim that Kreyling disproves. He shows that their torch was taken by Richard Weaver on the Right and Louis D. Rubin, Jr., on the Center-Left and that both critics tried to preserve the Fugitive-Agrarian credo despite the severe stresses imposed during the era of desegregation. As the southern literary paradigm has been attacked and defended, certain issues have remained in the forefront. Kreyling takes on
Michael Kreyling, a professor of English at Vanderbilt University, is the author of several books, including Eudora Welty's Achievement of Order and Author and Eudora Welty and Diarmuid Russell .

Genres: Literary Criticism

220 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Jeffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

When an academic warns in his acknowledgements that the topic he has chosen to write about "seemed all too often to make sense only to me," and that it has "evolved--not always in a clear and coherent direction," and that there were "low days when going on with it did not seem to matter much," look out. What you are bound to get is an often senseless, generally incoherent piece of work that should have met its demise well before the University Press of Mississippi actually published it.

The one redeeming but incorrectly named chapter in Michael Kreyling's book is VII. Southern Writing under the Influence of William Faulkner. The chapter would more aptly be titled William Faulkner Writing under the Influence of 'Faulkner'. No matter the title, Kreyling makes a strong case that the slackening seen in the later work of William Faulkner may be attributed to the writer's inability to live up to the expectations placed upon the author.

[Preston Scott Blakeley · Rating 4 out of 5]

For thesis. Precursor to Bone.