Southern Agrarians: Difference between revisions

The '''Southern Agrarians''' were twelve American [[Southern United States|Southerners]] who wrote an [[Agrarianism|agrarian]] literary manifesto in 1930. They and their essay collection, ''I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition'', contributed to the [[Southern Renaissance]], the reinvigoration of [[Southern United States literature|Southern literature]] in the 1920s and 1930s.{{Sfn | Davidson | Fletcher | Kline | Lanier | 2006}} They were based at [[Vanderbilt University]] in Nashville. [[John Crowe Ransom]] was their unofficial leader, though [[Robert Penn Warren]] became their most prominent member. The membership overlaps with [[Fugitives (poets)|The Fugitives]].

They were offended by [[H. L. Mencken]]'s attacks on aspects of Southern culture that they valued, such as its agrarianism, conservatism, and religiosity.<ref>Shapiro, Edward S. (1972). [http://journals.ku.edu/index.php/amerstud/aThe Southern Agrarians, H. L. Mencken, and the Quest for Southern Identityrticle/view/2401/2360 ""], ''American Studies'' 13: 75-92.</ref><ref name="Shapiro">{{cite journal |last1=Shapiro |first1=Edward S. |title=The Southern Agrarians, H. L. Mencken, and the Quest for Southern Identity |journal=American Studies |date=Fall 1972 |volume=13 |issue=2 |pages=75–92 |doijstor=10.2307/40641078 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40641078 |access-date=2020-09-09 |archive-date=2021-04-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210420224644/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40641078 |url-status=live }}</ref> They sought to confront the widespread and rapidly increasing effects of modernity, urbanism, and industrialism on American (but especially Southern) culture and tradition. The Agrarians were influenced by the [[medievalism]] of [[Victorian era|Victorian]] writers [[Thomas Carlyle]], [[John Ruskin]] and [[William Morris]], as well as the French right-wing tradition that began with [[Counter-Enlightenment]] philosopher [[Joseph de Maistre]], which they accessed through the writings of contemporaries [[T. E. Hulme]], [[T. S. Eliot]] and [[Charles Maurras]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Karanikas |first=Alexander |url=http://archive.org/details/tillersofmythsou0000kara_a3j5 |title=Tillers of a Myth: Southern Agrarians as Social and Literary Critics |date=1966 |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press |others= |location=Madison |pages=81 |url-access=registration}}</ref> The informal leader of the Fugitives and the Agrarians was [[John Crowe Ransom]], but in a 1945 essay, he announced that he no longer believed in either the possibility or the desirability of an Agrarian restoration, which he declared a "fantasy".<ref>Ransom, John Crowe (1945). "Art and the Human Economy", ''[[Kenyon Review]]'' 7: 686.</ref>

{{quoteblockquote|All the articles bear in the same sense upon the book's title-subject: all tend to support a Southern way of life against what may be called the American or prevailing way; and all as much as agree that the best terms in which to represent the distinction are contained in the phrase, Agrarian ''versus'' Industrial. ...Opposed to the industrial society is the agrarian, which does not stand in particular need of definition. An agrarian society is hardly one that has no use at all for industries, for professional vocations, for scholars and artists, and for the life of cities. Technically, perhaps, an agrarian society is one in which agriculture is the leading vocation, whether for wealth, for pleasure, or for prestige – a form of labor that is pursued with intelligence and leisure, and that becomes the model to which the other forms approach as well as they may. But an agrarian regime will be secured readily enough where the superfluous industries are not allowed to rise against it. The theory of agrarianism is that the culture of the soil is the best and most sensitive of vocations, and that therefore it should have the economic preference and enlist the maximum number of workers.{{Sfn | Davidson | Fletcher | Kline | Lanier | 1930}}}}

The Agrarians were the most prolific contributors to ''[[The American Review (literary journal)|The American Review]]'', edited by [[Seward Collins]].<ref name="Tucker2006" /> Various Agrarians contributed as many as 70 articles, led by Donald Davidson with 21.<ref name="winchell">{{cite book|last=Winchell|first=Mark Royden|title=Where No Flag Flies: Donald Davidson and the Southern Resistance|publisher=University of Missouri Press|date=2000|isbn=9780826212740 |url=https://archive.org/details/wherenoflagflies00winc|url-access=registration|quote=Where No Flag Flies: Donald Davidson and the Southern Resistance.}}</ref> Scholar [[Louis Menand]] has identified many of their contributions as influential in spreading the idea of [[New Criticism]] to the United States from Britain.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Menand |first=Louis |title=The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War |publisher=Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |year=2021 |isbn=9780374158453 |location=New York |pages=466}}</ref>

At a reunion of the Fugitive Poets in 1956, Warren confessed that for about a decade — from just before World War II to some years after — he had shut Agrarianism from his mind as irrelevant to the cataclysmic social and political events then playing out in the world. Now, however, he believed that, rather than being irrelevant, his old Agrarian enthusiasms were tied into the major problems of the age. In the modern world, the individual had been marginalized, stripped of any sense of responsibility, or of past or place. "In this context," writes Paul V. Murphy, "the Agrarian image of a better [[Antebellum South|antebellum South]] came to represent for Warren a potential source of spiritual revitalization. The past recalled, not as a mythical 'golden age' but 'imaginatively conceived and historically conceived in the strictest readings of the researchers', could be a 'rebuke to the present'."<ref name=rebuke>Murphy, Paul V. (2001). [http://www.ibiblio.org/uncpress/chapters/murphy_rebuke.html ''The Rebuke of History'': Introduction] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120119023712/http://www.ibiblio.org/uncpress/chapters/murphy_rebuke.html |date=2012-01-19 }}, University of North Carolina Press.</ref>

* {{Citation | first1 = Donald | last1 = Davidson | author1-link = Donald Davidson (poet) | first2 = John Gould | last2 = Fletcher | author2-link = John Gould Fletcher | first3 = Henry Blue | last3 = Kline | author3-link = Henry Blue Kline | first4 = Lyle H | last4 = Lanier | author4-link = Lyle H. Lanier | first5 = Andrew Nelson | last5 = Lytle | author5-link = Andrew Nelson Lytle | first6 = Herman Clarence | last6 = Nixon | author6-link = Herman Clarence Nixon | first7 = Frank Lawrence |last7=Owsley | author7-link = Frank Lawrence Owsley | first8 = John Crowe | last8 = Ransom | author8-link = John Crowe Ransom | first9 = Allen | last9 = Tate | author9-link = Allen Tate | first10 = John Donald | last10 = Wade | author10-link = John Donald Wade | first11 = Robert Penn | last11 = Warren | author11-link = Robert Penn Warren | first12 = Stark | last12 = Young | author12-link = Stark Young | title = I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition | year = 2006 | edition = 75th anniversary | publisher = Louisiana State Univ. Press | ISBNisbn = 0-8071-3208-X}}.

* {{Cite book | last=Rubin | first=Louis D. Jr. |url=http://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofso0000unse_d5d4 |title=The Encyclopedia of Southern History |date=1979 |publisher=Louisiana State University Press |others= |isbn=978-0-8071-0575-7 |editor-last=Roller |editor-first=David C. |location=Baton Rouge and London |pages=618 |chapter=I'll Take My Stand |editor-last2=Twyman |editor-first2=Robert W.}}