The Cambridge companion to the literature of the American South

Abstract

The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American South. Edited by Sharon Monteith. (New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. [xiv], 242. Paper, $29.99, ISBN 978-1-107-61085-9; cloth, $85.00, ISBN 978-1-107-03678-9.) Sharon Monteith has long been leading figure in American cultural studies, and her interdisciplinary investments have given her work extraordinary range in dealing with and moving beyond the modern South. Thus she would seem an ideal choice as editor of this very contemporary collection of essays. And the collection delivers on this promise; it will be particularly useful in expanding the conception and canon of to include writings from outside the region and, indeed, outside the United States, as well as writings of more evanescent geographic situation that nevertheless engage the in vital ways. Indeed, Monteith's (and her contributors') global perspective may be the most startling element to those unfamiliar with much recent work in the field. The volume's contributors include many fine scholars from the last two generations. Kathryn B. McKee's essay on nineteenth-century southern literature, Judie Newman's on slave and neo-slave narratives, Will Kaufman's on Civil War literature, Scott Romine's on Reconstruction literature, and David A. Davis's on southern modernism offer broad historical overviews that orient the field in both familiar and new ways. Kaufman's discussion of Tap Roots (New York, 1942) provides typical example of the value of this approach, situating James H. Street's novel (and 1948 Hollywood film adaptation) within the long and contested historical legacy of the Lost Cause, and placing the novel's vexed modern reception amid ongoing debates about the range of southern white attitudes toward secession. Confederate nationhood, and white supremacy. (This admirable attention to underappreciated works nearly, but not entirely, exculpates Kaufman for failing to mention even once in his piece William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! [New York, 1936], surely the greatest of all Civil War novels ever written.) Other essays use topical approaches, stretching both the regional parameters of southernness and the methodological tools available in confronting texts. Ernest Suarez and Gary Richards ably address poetry and drama, respectively. Pearl Amelia McHaney offers far-reaching treatment of southern women's writing and its substantial influence beyond the South. Sarah Gleeson-White examines southerners' screen writings and fiction about the film industry, focusing on Walker Percy's Lancelot (New York, 1977) and Horace McCoy's neglected I Should Have Stayed Home (New York, 1938), enabling, as she argues, a set of incongruous practices, writers, and concerns to come into view, compelling us not only to rethink but also to expand the category of Southern literature (p. 146). Likewise, Michael P. Bibler's theoretically sophisticated essay, Queering the Region, suggests some of the ways that writers have used models of sexual and gender queerness to resist, revise, or otherwise engage with the dominant cultural narratives of the South (p. …