A Southern Renaissance: The Cultural Awakening Of The American South, 1930-1955

A Southern Renaissance This page intentionally left blank A Southern Renaissance The Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955 Richard H.King OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Toronto Melbourne OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford London Glasgow New York Toronto Melbourne Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi and associate companies in Beirut Berlin Ibadan Mexico City Copyright © 1980 by Oxford University Press, Inc. First published by Oxford University Press, New York, 1980 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1982 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data King, Richard H. A Southern Renaissance. Bibliography: p. i. American literature—Southern StatesHistory and criticism. 2. American literature— 2oth century—History and criticism. 3. Southern States—Civilization. 4. Southern States—Intellectual life. I. Title. PS261.K45 810'.9'975 79-9470 ISBN 0-19-502664-0 ISBN 0-19-503043-5 pbk. Grateful acknowledgment is given to publishers and copyright holders for permission to reprint selected passages from the following: The Collected Poems of James Agee, edited by Robert Fitzgerald. Copyright © 1962, 1968 by The James Agee Trust. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee. Copyright © renewed 1969 by Mia Fritsch Agee. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. Letters of James Agee to Father Flye, by James Agee. Reprinted by permission of James Harold Flye. Selected Letters of William Faulkner, by William Faulkner, edited by Joseph Blotner. Copyright © 1977 by Jill Faulkner Summers. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. Brother to Dragons, by Robert Penn Warren. Copyright 1953 by Robert Penn Warren. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. The Collected Poems of William Alexander Percy, by William Alexander Percy. Copyright 1943 by Leroy Pratt Percy. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. The Letters of Thomas Wolfe, edited by Elizabeth Nowell. Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. Allen Tate, Collected Poems 1919-1976. Copyright © 1952, 1953, 1970, 1977 by Allen Tate. Copyright 1931, 1932, 1937, 1948 by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright renewed © 1959, 1960, 1965 by Allen Tate. Reprinted with permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. The Literary Correspondence of Donald Davidson and Allen Tate by John T. Fain and Daniel Young, by permission of the University of Georgia Press. Copyright © 1974 by the University of Georgia Press. "Sequel of Appomattox," by Donald Davidson. Reprinted by permission of Mary Davidson Bell. This printing (last digit): 987654321 Printed in the United States of America To My Parents, Dorothy and Dawson King This page intentionally left blank Preface The origins of this book lie in the early 1960s when I was an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina. During those years the activist phase of the Civil Rights movement began in nearby Greensboro and soon spread throughout the South. No one who was a Southerner or who lived south of the Mason-Dixon line at that time could help but be aware that enormous changes were in the offing. At roughly the same time, I first read Faulkner and was immediately and permanently hooked. Indicative of Faulkner's impact was my response to a question posed in an interview for a graduate fellowship. One of my interrogators asked whom I considered the leading Southern historian. Though I had read W. J. Cash and C. V