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]].

{{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>