University of Kentucky UKnowledge Literature in English, North America English Language and Literature 1997 Twentieth-Century Southern Literature J. A. Bryant Jr. University of Kentucky Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Bryant, J. A. Jr., "Twentieth-Century Southern Literature" (1997). Literature in English, North America. 12. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_english_language_and_literature_north_america/12 NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOUTH Charles P Roland, General Editor This page intentionally left blank Twentieth-Century Southern Literature J. A. BRYANT JR. THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 1997 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bryant, J. A. (Joseph Allen), 1919– Twentieth-century southern literature / J.A. Bryant, Jr. p. cm. — (New perspectives on the South) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8131-2040-3 (cloth : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-8131-0937-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. American literature—Southern States—History and criticism. 2. Southern States—In literature. 3. American literature—20th century—History and criticism. 4. Southern States—Intellectual life— 20th century. I. Title. II. Series. PS261.B79 1997 810.9'975'0904—D21 97–10495 ISBN-13: 978-0-8131-0937-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses For Sara This page intentionally left blank Contents Editor's Preface ix Preface xi Introduction 1 Part One: The Making ofa Southern Literature 1 The Development of Modern Southern Fiction 11 2 Poetry and Politics at Vanderbilt, 1920-40 38 3 The New Emphasis on Craftsmanship 61 4 Two Major Novelists 74 5 Southern Playwrights 87 Part Two: A Renaissance in Full Swing 6 The Beginning of Recognition 103 7 Southern Regionalism Comes of Age 117 8 Women Extend Fiction's Range 137 9 The New Black Writers 155 Part Three: Postwar Development and Diversification 10 The South After World War II 167 11 Postwar Poetry 176 12 Mainstream Fiction 196 13 The New Major Writers 208 14 Three Key Figures 226 15 Robert Penn Warren 248 Bibliographical Note 261 Index 271 This page intentionally left blank Editor's Preface Words, whether spoken or written, have given the South its most distinctive form ofcultural expression. Oratorywas the Old South's most flourishing means ofaddress; writing eclipsed oratory in the twentieth century. Hardly had the celebrated critic H.L. Mencken coined his arid epithet on the region, dub­ bing it "the Sahara of the Bozart" (a cultural desert), when it flowered into what was to become known as the "Southern Renaissance." Southern litera­ ture continues to blossom. The author of the present work, Professor Joseph A. Bryant Jr., has en­ joyed a long career ofstudying and teaching American and English literature, and has gained from it an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, acuteness of perception, and a maturity ofjudgment in his fields. He concisely and bril­ liantly captures here the essence ofhis subject. This book is, therefore, ideally suited for inclusion in the New Perspec­ tives on the South series, which is designed to give a fresh and comprehensive view of the defining aspects of the regional experience. Each volume is ex­ pected to be a complete essay representing both a syntheSiS ofthe best schol­ arship on its topic and an interpretive analysis drawn from the author's own reflections. CHARLES P ROLAND This page intentionally left blank Preface The present book is best thought ofas an overview-one observer's account, more orless in sequence, ofthe significant literary achievements ofsoutherners during the twentieth century. A friendly observer has called it a "primer," a designation that is probably as accurate as any. To some extent, moreover, it is an idiosyncratic primer, with a selection and emphasis which, though intended to be fair, are the author's alone. Inevitably the scholarship in it is in large part a compilation and assessment of the discoveries and insights of others, hun­ dreds of researchers and critics who have patiently studied one or more as­ pects or parts of a field that, as fields go, is bewildering and sometimes baf­ fling in its diversity and complexity. Many of these workers' contributions have been recorded in two valu­ able bibliographies, Louis D. Rubin Jr.'s A Bibliographical Guide to the Study ofSouthern Literature (Baton Rouge, La., 1969), andJerryT. Williams's South­ ern Literature, 1968-1975 (Boston, 1978). Listings ofmore recent work may be found in the annual bibliographies of the Modem Language Association and in the newsletter published by the Society for the Study of Southern Literature. Much ofthat activity is reflected in the most recent comprehen­ sive account, The History of Southern Literature (Baton Rouge, La., 1985), prepared by a group of established scholars under the general editorship of Louis Rubin Jr. For students at all levels this work is an indispensable starting point and resource. The present writer gratefully acknowledges that it has been so for him. Finally, for valuable criticism and encouragement I am indebted to the members of my family and to several friends of long standing. Among the latter I am espeCially grateful to two former colleagues, Jerome Meckier and John Cawelti of the University of Kentucky, to George Core of the Sewanee Review, to George Garrett ofthe University ofVirginia, whose scrutiny ofan earlier draft and suggestions for improvement have put me deeply in his debt, to Armando Prats, who came to the rescue when my computer faltered, and to Walter C. Foreman, without whose knowledge of computer strategies completion ofthis book might have been postponed indefinitely. This page intentionally left blank Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century, even the most ardent chauvinist would have hesitated to make a case for the existence ofa southern literature. The South, in the years before and immediately after the Civil War, had pro­ duced competent writers, among them a few whose works continue to bear the scrutiny ofdiscerning readers. Poe was one ofthese, but for the most part he had ignored the region in his writing. Sidney Lanier had written knowl­ edgeably and sympathetically about the South, but Lanier considered its in­ tellectual climate stultifying and sought for a time to leave. Mark Twain, born on the fringes ofthe South, disparaged its manners and mores. The rest, with one or two exceptions, had been content to turn out either a succession of plantation narratives, sentimental stories rich mainly in spurious nostalgia, or local-color sketches ofvarying degrees ofauthenticity. Noone at the time could have foreseen that within fifty years critics both in the region and outside it would begin pointing to a "Southern Renaissance" and speculate about its causes and its future. Nevertheless, at midcentury the evidence that something ofthe sort had happened was plain to see. It was also clear that no one city or region, no single movement or coterie, could take credit for more than a fraction ofthe large body ofliterature that southerners had managed to produce almost while no one was looking, and that publish­ ers, mainly in the North, had been willing and sometimes eager to publish­ this abundance, moreover, in spite of decades of economic depression and a dearth of cultural amenities so severe that one ofits critics, Baltimore~s H.L. Mencken, himselfat least technically a southerner, had referred to the area as a "Sahara ofthe Bozart." The body ofmaterial, which effectively gave the lie to Mencken~s epithet, was remarkable both for its diversity and for its coherence. The sentimental romance was still there (Gone with the Wind was a best-seller in the late 1930s), as was the tale oflocal color, although happily the device of dialectal spelling had all but disappeared; but these old standbys were now over­ shadowed in the eyes of discriminating readers by a wide variety of novels and specimens of short fiction, a poetry of genuine sophistication, essays on a multitude of topics, and a respectable body of literary criticism that was commanding attention, international as well as national, beyond any that had been produced in America since Poe. The coherence in southern writing was 1 2 Introduction traceable, at least in large part, to a sense ofplace that after the Civil War had become a major informing principle in virtually everything that southerners produced. Frequentlythat sense ofplace was twofold, manifesting itselffirst as con­ sciousness ofa specific location-Middle Tennessee, Southern Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, the Virginia Piedmont, or perhaps even a city, Charleston or New Orleans. But as a rule, the reader could usually detect, lurking some­ where above or behind a writer's particular regional consciousness, unmistak­ able intimations ofa transcendent and controlling awareness ofthe South as a whole and ofhis or her identity with it.