Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South

Richard Gray is Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of Essex. His books include The Literature of Memory: Modern Writers of the American South, Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region (which won the C. Hugh Holman Award from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature), American Poetry of the Twentieth Century, The Life of William Faulkner: A Critical Biography, Southern Aberrations: Writers of the American South and the Problems of Regionalism, and A History of American Literature. He is also editor of a number of collections and anthologies, and a regular reviewer for various newspapers and journals, including the Times Literary Supplement and the Literary Review. He is the first specialist in American literature to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy.Owen Robinson is Lecturer in American Literature at the University of Essex. He is the author of several articles on the novels of William Faulkner, and is editing A Routledge Guide to Light in August. He is currently working on writing centred on New Orleans, and on reader-writer relations in African American literature.

"The exhaustive range of part 2, "Themes and Issues" merits praise. Rather than focussing on literature or a narrow definition of culture, the editors have solicited some fine essays in subjects ranging from music and religion to sports and popular culture." (American Studies, April 2009) A CHOICE ‘OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE’“The latest volume in Blackwell's "Companions to Literature and Culture" series features 33 brief essays that run the gamut of the Southern experience, from the Jamestown settlers to the contemporary era…Like Blackwell guides, the quality of the essays is high, and the authors cover as many points as possible within the space limits given them. Highly recommended. All academic and public libraries.”  (Choice)"[T]he many contributors, British and American, to this splendid compendium of fact and opinion demonstrate the rich variety of literature and music that has emanated from the South in the past 150 years [...] The Companion is methodical in its overall structure and is comprehensive, informative and clearly written throughout. Each chapter has extensive lists of references and further reading and the index is full and accurate. This is a work that will remain a vital source for students of the subject and that can be profitably used by readers in general." (Reference Reviews)

• Acknowledgments xNotes on Contributors xiiList of Plates xviiiPART I Introduction 11 Writing Southern Cultures 3Richard GrayPART II Themes and Issues 272 The First Southerners: Jamestown’s Colonists as Exemplary Figures 29Mary C. Fuller3 Slave Narratives 43Jerry Phillips4 Plantation Fiction 58John M. Grammer5 The Slavery Debate 76Susan-Mary Grant6 Southern Writers and the Civil War 93Susan-Mary Grant7 Visualizing the Poor White 110Stuart Kidd8 Southern Appalachia 130Linda Tate9 The Southern Literary Renaissance 148Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr.10 The Native-American South 166Mick Gidley and Ben Gidley11 Southern Music 185John White12 Country Music 203Barbara Ching13 The Civil Rights Debate 221Richard H. King14 Southern Religion(s) 238Charles Reagan Wilson15 African-American Fiction and Poetry 255R. J. Ellis16 Southern Drama 280Mark Zelinsky and Amy Cuomo17 Sports in the South 297Diane Roberts18 The South Through Other Eyes 317Helen Taylor19 The South in Popular Culture 335Allison GrahamPART III Individuals and Movements 35320 Edgar Allan Poe 355Henry Claridge21 Southwestern Humor 370John M. Grammer22 Mark Twain 388Peter Stoneley23 Ellen Glasgow 403Julius Rowan Raper24 Fugitives and Agrarians 420Andrew Hook25 William Faulkner 436Richard Godden26 Literature of the African-American Great Migration 454Kate Fullbrook27 Zora Neale Hurston 472Will Brantley28 Flannery O’Connor 486Susan Castillo29 Eudora Welty 502Jan Nordby Gretlund30 Oral Culture and Southern Fiction 518Jill Terry31 Recent and Contemporary Women Writers in the South 536Sharon Monteith32 The South in Contemporary African-American Fiction 552A. Robert Lee33 Writing in the South Now 571Matthew GuinnPART IV Afterword 58934 Searching for Southern Identity 591James C. CobbIndex 608