 | Remapping Southern Literature: Contemporary Southern Writers and the West Subjects: American literature -- Southern States -- History and criticism; American literature -- West (U.S.) -- History and criticism; Regionalism in literature; Southern States -- Intellectual life -- 1865–; Southern States -- In literature; West (U.S.) -- In lit; One of the most significant and surprising developments in contemporary southern fiction is that an increasing number of southern writers are writing about the American West. In Remapping Southern Literature: Contemporary Southern Writers and the West , Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr. studies current southern authors of western novels, historical fiction, and contemporary fiction who have been breaking the mold of southern literature by looking westward. Cut loose, in the postmodern age, from the traditional roots in a sense of place, contemporary southern writers have explored an American West shaped by the myths of lawless freedom and disruptive expansion. The rich and diverse fiction of Doris Betts, Barry Hannah, Cormac McCarthy, Madison Smartt Bell, Richard Ford, Rick Bass, Barbara Kingsolver, Chris Offutt, Frederick Barthelme, Dorothy Allison, and Clyde Edgerton, among others, challenges long-standing definitions of southern fiction and regional identity and reconfigures the myths of the West that have long shaped American life. ROBERT H. BRINKMEYER JR. is professor and chair of the Department of English at the University of Arkansas. His books include Katherine Anne Porter's Artistic Development: Primitivism, Traditionalism, and Totalitarianism ; The Art and Vision of Flannery O'Connor ; and Three Catholic Writers of the Modern South . |
