Please refer to the Message Section. Agrarianism in Southern Literature

Agrarianism is defined as a political and social doctrine that emphasizes the importance of farming and the cultivation of plant life for man to lead a happier and fuller life.doubting Thomas Jefferson, one of the chief proponents of Agrarian thought in American history, had mentioned its significance thus Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if He ever had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His curious deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which He keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth (Agrarianism).Agrarianism in Confederate literature evolved at a time when the culture of the South was supposed to have been attacked by modernity. To counter the negative impact of modernity on the grey culture and traditions, a group of twelve traditionalist poets and writers published an Agrarian collection of essays in 1930 Ill Take My Stand.The thesis of this manifesto was that the past rebu kes the put forward for the latters dependency on machines as opposed to nature. The South was seen as traditionally agricultural, and its people were understood as non-materialistic, religious, as well as well-educated.This viewpoint eventually took shape as an entire musical genre in Confederate literature, as the writers and poets who had written for Ill Take My Stand showed how Confederate agrarianism could be expressed not only in poetry and essays, but also in biographies, novels, and works of literary and social criticism (MacKethan).Nevertheless, southerly agrarianism is considered an offshoot of Southern modernism, seeing that the subject of agrarian literature is alienation a feeling of being out of place. Moreover, almost all of the agrarian authors and poets are modern (Grammer).One of the notable Southern agrarians and a contributor to Ill Take My Stand, Allen Tate has described his writing thus My attempt is to see the present(a) from the past, yet remain immers ed in the present and committed to it (Fain and Young 189). Even so, Southern modernism is considered an altogether separate genre (MacKethan).Influenced by modernism, Southern agrarianism is said to produced the South (Kreyling 6). MacKethan writes that Southern agrarianism was largely a myth which the Southern agrarians as the contributors to Ill Take My Stand are called had succeeded in propagating as reality.So, although Southern agrarianism was a myth, the writers and poets who had advocated agrarianism were successful in portraying the Southern peoples as non-materialist, lovers of nature. They had managed to make the Southern peoples keep their focus on agrarianism to boot.Even so, as Kreyling maintains, the agrarian movement in Southern literature did not approach a unity of thought that the Southern agrarian writers and poets had claimed to be a mark of their traditional culture.Today, it is not possible to study the literature of the South without the agrarian get in it s midst. Moreover, despite its mythical nature, Southern agrarianism is said to present an aesthetically gratifying world of pure form in literature (Grammer 131).This Southern genre is a widely accepted one. All the same, some of its proponents have left it altogether. According to Ransom, Southern agrarianism was a constraint on his imagination.Robert Penn Warren, on the other hand, is cognize to have immersed himself completely in the philosophy of agrarianism (Grammer). Regardless, agrarianism continues to be understood as an essential part of Southern literature, balancing the past with the present.Works CitedAgrarianism. Answers. 2007. 10 Nov 2007. .Fain, John Tyree, and Thomas Daniel Young (eds.). The Literary Correspondence of DonaldDavidson and Allen Tate. Athens, GA University of Georgia Press, 1974.Grammer, J. M. Reconstructing Southern Literature. American Literary History (Spring 2001),Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 126-140.Kreyling, Michael. Inventing Southern Literature. Jackso n University Press of Mississippi,1998.MacKethan, Lucinda. Genres of Southern Literature. Southern Spaces. 1 Aug 2005. 10 Nov2007. .Ransom, John Crowe. Wanted An Ontological Critic. Selected Essays of John CroweRansom. Ed. Thomas Daniel Young and John Hindle. Baton Rouge Louisiana State University Press, 1984, pp. 147-79.