Frivolity to Consumption: Or, Southern Womanhood in Antebellum Literature (original) (raw)
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Literary Narratives of the Antebellum South: Conceptualizations or Polarizations
2018
The focal point of the present essay is examining the representations of the Old South in Southern American literature. The South as a region (and the prewar epoch) occupied the American imagination for so long, and still does. Not only it gave birth to some of the greatest writers worldwide, but it produced songs, movies, much cotton and also myths. Thus, it is important to investigate the portrayal of the Antebellum South in southern literary works. William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind are one of the novels that marked the southern renaissance (1930s) like no other two did. However, their representations of the Civil War and the southern way of life cannot be more dissimilar. In what way(s) are these narratives different? And what is the impact, if any, of such difference on their reception? These are the main questions that the present research aims to answer.
White-pillared mansions, courtly cavaliers, charming belles and happy slaves – these are some of the best known images associated with the antebellum South. These images were created by the authors of plantation romances, the first literary genre to originate in the South, and they are in sharp contrast to the images presented by slave narratives and abolitionist novels. This paper focuses on John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn (1832) and Caroline Lee Hentz's The Planter's Northern Bride (1854) and their contribution to the creation of the Myth of the Old South.
The Scourges of the South: Essays on "The "Sickly South" in History, Literature, and Popular Culture
In this book, eleven scholars “take their stand” on the controversial issue of disease as it occurs in the context of the American South. Playing on the popular vision of the South as an ill region on several levels, the European and American contributors interpret various aspects of the regional “sickly” culture as not so much southern “problems”, but, rather, southern opportunities, or else, springboards to yet another of the South’s cultural revitalizations, “health”. As Thomas Ærvold Bjerre and Beata Zawadka note in their introduction, the so-called “Healthy South” has never been an easy topic for scholars dealing with the region. One reason for this is that researchers have been taught to approach so formulated a topic no further than to the point when it turns out it is a contradiction in terms, and, indeed, there is much in southern history and the present situation that justifies such an approach. This volume, however, comprises a collective effort of southernist historians, literature experts, and culture critics to transcend the “contradictory” concept of the “Healthy South,” and does so by reinventing the notion of the southern disease and, consequently, the role of the South as a “scourge” in American culture in terms of this culture’s bountiful gift. Thomas Ærvold Bjerre is Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. He has published widely on southern literature and popular culture. Beata Zawadka is Associate Professor of American Culture at Szczecin University, Poland. She specializes in the US South, particularly the region’s performative potential.
Hidden Voices and Gothic Undertones: Slavery and Folklore of the American South
eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, 2019
African American folklore embodies themes of the Tropical Gothic. It has an air of mystery as it has a deeper meaning underneath the different layers of plot. Folklore of the American South represents the darkness of the slavery period and its implications for African Americans. This article discusses two folklore collections: Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings: The Folk lore of the Old Plantation by Joel Chandler Harris, and From My People: 400 Years of Folklore by Daryl Cumber Dance. Both collections illuminate the ways in which West African oral tradition became a source of empowerment, courage and wisdom for the enslaved African Americans. Folk stories served as a means of silent resistance and preserved the cultural heritage of African Americans.