The Idea of the South: Pursuit of a Central Theme (Rice University Semicentennial Series)

Dust jacket notes: "What is the South? Is this sphinx of America definable? Seven distinguished Southerners present varying ideas of the past, present, and future of their enigmatic homeland. Identifying the disparity between the North and the South, the authors search for the waywardness of the South. Northern as well as Southern readers will find these essays highly intelligible, enlightening, and absorbing. Seeing the South as a seedbed of conflicting myths, George B. Tindall explores the viable myths that have shaped, unified, and developed Southern society. Richard Harwell urges the regional patriot of the South to break off his Civil War self-consciousness and become an American. Louis D. Rubin points out that the flowering of Southern literature in the works of Thomas Wolfe, Robert Penn Warren, and Katherine Anne Porter signified the end of the Old South. T. Harry Williams traces the movement of Southern politics toward realism - acceptance of the present and emancipation from the past of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Williams calls for more critics who are home grown dissenters. Frank E. Vandiver characterizes violence as the main current which has flowed through Southern history. Walter Prescott Webb and Hugh B. Patterson look to the future of the South, hoping to promote through Southwide conferences a Southern renaissance. That there is a tangible, living South becomes clear in these papers - a traditional South of the past, a confused South of the present, and a future South of promises. The elusive central theme is a South in change."