Religion and the US South
Overview Introduction Religion has been a formative experience for those living in the US South. “It’s just there,” said William Faulkner in explaining why religion appeared so often in his novels and stories (Glynn and Blotner, 1959, 41). It was not a matter of whether Faulkner or other southerners were necessarily believers themselves, but it […]
Cajun South Louisiana
Overview Beginnings to 1800s No other area of the US South has so embraced a French heritage as a foundational and enduring part of its culture as south Louisiana. A complex ethnic and demographic history, combined with a striking topography compared to other places within the South, have made south Louisiana a distinctive place, one […]
Southwestern Humor: The Beginning of “Grit Lit”
Overview Southwestern Humor Southwestern humor is perhaps the most intriguing of southern antebellum literary genres, for writers of this loose-knit “school,” often contributors to sporting or gentlemen’s magazines, abandoned the plantation setting entirely and envisioned the South as an indeterminate space of unstable and shifting boundaries. Indeed the salient slogan for the South delineated by […]
Local Color
Overview Local Color Local Color as a literary genre bears the full weight of the concept of region, for its typical stories and sketches offer highly particularized visions of “locale” that are “colored” by regionally defined characters, settings, folkways, and dialects. The paradox, and thus the richness, of this often discounted form lies in the […]
Genres of Southern Literature
Overview Introduction “Southern literature” announces the conjunction of the US South and an expressive art — texts identified as belonging to a particular history, social organization, and cultural imaginary. In defining a text’s “southernness,” the matter of its genre might not seem a touchstone of much value. To some, genres are universal categories that describe […]