ENGL 354 - Literature of the American South

Institution:

University of Richmond

Subject:

Description:

Representative poetry and prose of the Southern states, with attention to cultural, social, and political backgrounds. Prerequisite(s): English 297 or 298 with a grade of C or better. Unit(s): 1 Additional Information: The South of myth and the South of history have combined to produce a literature fascinating in both its range and conflicting images. Issues of familial and communal heritage, conceptions of place and region, and relations among various racial and ethnic groups are among the most prominent and pressing themes in Southern literature, but since such might be said of any regional American literature, this course asks, what makes this literature particularly "Southern" We can begin to understand some of the oppositions constructed in the Old South and represented in its literature - between blacks and whites, the landed gentry and the yeoman farmer, the strict gender roles of ladies and gentlemen - by examining particularly Southern attitudes toward honor and the land in works by Thomas Nelson Page, Charles Chesnutt, and Kate Chopin. To chart the evolution of Southern literature from the romantic rhetorical mode to the modern dialectical mode and subsequent postmodern permutations, the course investigates the effects of changing social conditions and new fictional forms on representations of the South in works by such writers as Dorothy Allison, William Faulkner, Ernest Gaines, Ellen Glasgow, Josephine Humphreys, Randall Kenan, Jean Toomer, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, and Richard Wright. The final weeks of the semester focus on the following questions: Is today's South more a matter of social perception than social distinction Is there anything still "Southern" about the contemporary South Does the South now look like the rest of the country, as some, such as John Edgerton in The Americanization of Dixie, claim Or as others, such as Peter Applebome, have suggested, does the United States now look like the South What role do writers play in mythologizing, reconstructing, and/or reinventing the South

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.richmond.edu

Phone Number:

(804) 289-8000

Regional Accreditation:

Southern Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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