Memory and Myth by
Memory and Myth is an interdisciplinary study of the Civil War and its enduring impact on American writers and filmmakers. Its twenty-five chapters are all concerned, in one way or another, with creative responses to the Civil War, and the ways in which artists have sought to make sense of the war and to convey their findings to succeeding generations of readers and filmgoers. The book also examines the role of movies and television in transmuting the historical memories of the Civil War into durable, ever-changing myths.
The History of Southern Literature by 
A New Reader of the Old South by
The literary Canon of the old South is redefined in this remarkable companion to the highly acclaimed A Modern Southern Reader. The literary canon of the old South is redefined in this remarkable companion to the highly acclaimed A Modern Southern Reader. Editors Ben Forkner and Patrick Samway, S. J. have selected from the most original and lasting works of nineteenth-century Southern writing (1820-1920) to reflect the full range of the Southern experience. The thorough introduction illuminates the individual pieces, providing insight into the culture of the Old South, from which rose a new generation of prominent, American writers.
A Companion to the Literature and Culture of the American South by
From slave narratives to the Civil War, and from country music to Southern sport, this Companion is the definitive guide to the literature and culture of the American South. Includes discussion of the visual arts, music, society, history, and politics in the region Combines treatment of major literary works and historical events with a survey of broader themes, movements and issues Explores the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Huston, Flannery O'Connor and Eudora Welty, as well as those - black and white, male and female - who are writing now Co-edited by the esteemed scholar Richard Gray, author of the acclaimed volume, A History of American Literature (Blackwell, 2003)
The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin by
Declared worthless and dehumanizing by James Baldwin in 1949, Uncle Tom's Cabin has lacked literary credibility for fifty years. Now, in a ringing refutation of Baldwin, Henry Louis Gates Jr. demonstrates the literary transcendence of Harriet Beecher Stowe's masterpiece. Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published in 1852, galvanized the American public as no other work of fiction has ever done. The editors animate pre-Civil War life with rich insights into the lives of slaves, abolitionists, and the American reading public. Examining the lingering effects of the novel, they provide new insights into emerging race-relation, women's, gay, and gender issues. With reproductions of rare prints, posters, and photographs, this book is also one of the most thorough anthologies of Uncle Tom images up to the present day.
The Power for Sanity by
At his death in 1878 William Cullen Bryant had been, for fifty-one years, the chief editor and a principal owner of the New York Evening Post. He had been both editor of and most frequent writer for the monthly New York Review and the United States Review, and was known widely for his lectures on poetry before the New York Athenacum. By the time he assumed the direction of the Evening Post in 1829 he had proved himself, in three annual volumes of the holiday gift book The Talisman, to be proficient in a wit and irony soon reflected in his editorials.
In the Master's Eye by
"This book explores the way in which literature can be used to reinforce social power. "Tracy focuses on the historical romances of six authors: George Tucker, James Ewell Heath, William Alexander Caruthers, John Pendleton Kennedy, Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, and William Gilmore Simms. Using variations on a recurring plot - in which a young planter/hero rescues a planter's daughter from an "enemy" of her class - each of these novelists reinforced an idealized vision of a Southern civilization based on male superiority, white supremacy, and class inequality. It is a world in which white men are represented as the natural leaders of loyal and dependent women, grateful and docile slaves, and inferior poor whites.
Mastering Slavery by
InMastering Slavery, Fleischner draws upon a range of disciplines, including psychoanalysis, African-American studies, literary theory, social history, and gender studies, to analyze how the slave narratives--in their engagement with one another and with white women's antislavery fiction--yield a far more amplified and complicated notion of familial dynamics and identity than they have generally been thought to reveal. Her study exposes the impact of the entangled relations among master, mistress, slave adults and slave children on the sense of identity of individual slave narrators. She explores the ways in which our of the social, psychological, biological--and literary--crossings and disruptions slavery engendered, these autobiographers created mixed, dynamic narrative selves.
I Was Born A Slave by
The turbulent life & times of Harriet Jacobs, who was born into slavery & lived for many years as a fugitive before winning her freedom & becoming an abolitionist, powerfully unfolds in this compelling historical narrative, featuring excerpts from Jacob's classic autobiography. Author's note, bibliography.
Slavery in the United States by
A comprehensive, contextual presentation of all aspects-social, political, and economic-of slavery in the United States, from the first colonization through Reconstruction.
The Narrative Forms of Southern Community by
In this succinct study, Scott Romine considers a key paradox that has been associated with the concept of "community" from the beginning of modern southern literary criticism: namely, that communities often valued for their cohesiveness and moral stability were at the same time sites of oppression along race and class lines. The Narrative Forms of Southern Community contains dose readings of five narratives -Augustus Baldwin Longstreet's Georgia Scenes, John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, Thomas NeLson Page's In Ok Virginia, William Alexander Percy's Lanterns on the Levee, and William Faulkner's Light in August -- that attempt to mediate or negotiate the social tensions inherent in the stratified world they represent.
Encyclopedia of the Antebellum South by
The only encyclopedia of the history, people, events, places, movements, and issues of the Antebellum South.