The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

Volume 9: Literature

Edited by M. Thomas Inge

Charles Reagan Wilson, General Editor

536 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 25 illus., bibl., index

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-5875-2
    Published: April 2008
  • E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-1664-3
    Published: February 2014
  • E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-8100-7
    Published: February 2014

New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture

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Offering a comprehensive view of the South's literary landscape, past and present, this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture celebrates the region's ever-flourishing literary culture and recognizes the ongoing evolution of the southern literary canon. As new writers draw upon and reshape previous traditions, southern literature has broadened and deepened its connections not just to the American literary mainstream but also to world literatures--a development thoughtfully explored in the essays here.

Greatly expanding the content of the literature section in the original Encyclopedia, this volume includes 31 thematic essays addressing major genres of literature; theoretical categories, such as regionalism, the southern gothic, and agrarianism; and themes in southern writing, such as food, religion, and sexuality. Most striking is the fivefold increase in the number of biographical entries, which introduce southern novelists, playwrights, poets, and critics. Special attention is given to contemporary writers and other individuals who have not been widely covered in previous scholarship.

Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi

About the Author

M. Thomas Inge is Robert Emory Blackwell Professor of Humanities at Randolph-Macon College. He is author or editor of numerous books, including William Faulkner and the four-volume Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture.
For more information about M. Thomas Inge, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"An essential reference book for students and scholars who need a single, contemporary volume from which they can begin their research."--Southern Literary Journal

"The depth and breadth of the biographical entries shows the great care invested in this edition and incorporates a wide selection of the best, brightest and most influential writers and their works."--Southern Historian

"Replaces and greatly expands upon the 'Literature' section of the original Encyclopedia of Southern Culture."--North Carolina Historical Review

"An excellent research aid in that it provides succinct yet well-weighted sketches of various issues, themes, and influential authors."--Journal of Folklore Research

โ€œThe literature volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture is a comprehensive collection of information about southern literary movements, genres, and writers that will become a necessary starting point for any scholar of the American literary South.โ€--Hugh Ruppersburg, University of Georgia

"I find the literature volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture a most impressive undertaking, ambitious, accurate, and well executed. The essays and sketches capture the vitality and the range of southern writing, past and present."--Fred Hobson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill