| Professor Robert
Dunne 318 Willard Hall 832-2756 dunne@ccsu.edu |
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Required Texts:
Crews, A Childhood (U of Georgia
P)
Dixon, The Clansman (UP of
Kentucky)
Douglass, My Bondage and My
Freedom (Dover)
Du Bois, The Souls of Black
Folk (Dover)
Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
(Vintage)
Forkner & Samway, ed.,
Stories of the Modern South (Penguin)
Page, In Ole Virginia (J. S.
Sanders)
Paskoff, ed., The Cause of
the South (Louisiana State UP)
Twelve Southerners, I'll Take
My Stand (Louisiana State UP)
COURSE OBJECTIVES
Although the very notion of
regional literature has been suspect in academe over the last few years,
Southern literature remains a field intact, yet still influenced, by such
debates. During the time of the Southern Renascence, in the first
half of this century, literary scholars had all but dismissed Southern
literature as even being "American," because of its nineteenth-century
indebtedness to European Romance and its obsession with the Lost Cause
of the Confederacy after the Civil War. However, during the second
half of this century, writing about the South has flourished and become
an academic industry. In this course we will survey four major periods
in Southern literary history: the antebellum period, in which the
myth of the South became solidified, despite writers like Frederick Douglass
who exposed the hollowness of many tenets of that myth; the writings of
the Lost Cause period, in which writers resurrected the myth of the now
"Old South"; the Southern Renascence, in which Southern writers consciously
attempted to refashion the myth; and the contemporary period, which has
seen a divergence of themes and issues emerge in Southern writing.
We will encounter in our studies many "props" of the Old South myth which
still have circulation today, such as chivalry, hospitality, religious
zeal, and an agrarian lifestyle. We will also examine many views,
some of which are as stereotyped as the Old South props, that expose the
South as a backward, racist society. Part of our job is to identify
the stuff of myth and stereotype and understand how they have been appropriated
by writers in defining an entire region. We will also recognize along
the way that there is no univocal portrait of the South, that there are
many "Souths" that include different sections of the region, as well as
an enduring presence of African American culture alongside and often in
conflict with various cross-sections of white culture.
Assignments:
There will be three 5-page critical
papers on texts that you choose from among those read in class. You will
follow the MLA Guide for Writers of Research Papers, 4th ed., for typing and
documentation format. No additional outside reading is required for these
papers, the deadlines of which will be determined by you, depending on which
works you choose to write on. In other words, when we discuss in class
a work on which you would like to write, you should, ideally, submit your paper
one week after that class.
There will also be a 10-page research paper (15 pages for graduate students),
in which you will write about at least one work (novel or short-story collection)
from the contemporary period not read in class. In addition, you will
make a brief, informal presentation (10-15 minutes) on your research paper,
to be scheduled during the last few weeks of the semester.