Southern Agrarians
Encyclopedia
The Southern Agrarians (also known as the Twelve Southerners, the Vanderbilt Agrarians, the Nashville Agrarians, the Tennessee Agrarians, or the Fugitive Agrarians) were a group of twelve American
writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States
, who joined together to write a pro-Southern
agrarian
manifesto, a collection of essays published in 1930 entitled I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (ISBN 080713208X).
The Southern Agrarians formed an important branch of American populism
. They contributed to the revival of Southern literature
in the 1920s and 1930s now known as the Southern Renaissance
. Most met each other as faculty and students at Vanderbilt University
in Nashville, Tennessee
.
, either as students or as faculty members. Davidson, Lytle, Ransom, Tate, and Warren all attended the university; Davidson and Ransom later joined the faculty, along with Wade and Owsley. They were moved to respond by their studies of poetic modernism and by H. L. Mencken
's scathing critique of Southern culture. They were offended not so much by his widely publicized essay "The Sahara of the Bozart", with which they tended to agree, but by his subsequent bitter attacks on aspects of Southern culture that they valued, such as its agrarianism, conservatism, and religiosity. They sought to confront the widespread and rapidly increasing effects of modernity, urbanism, and industrialism on American (but especially Southern) culture and tradition. The informal leader of the Fugitives and the Agrarians was John Crowe Ransom
, but in a 1945 essay he announced that he no longer believed in either the possibility or the desirability of an Agrarian restoration, which he declared a "fantasy". The most eloquent exponent of the Agrarian philosophy eventually proved to be Ransom's student Richard M. Weaver
, a friend of Donald Davidson. Unlike the others, Weaver taught at a Northern institution, the University of Chicago
. Other writers associated with the Agrarians include Caroline Gordon
, Brainard Cheney
and Herbert Agar
.
The Southern Agrarians bemoaned the increasing loss of Southern identity and culture to industrialization. They believed that the traditional agrarian roots of the United States, which dated back to the nation's founding in the 18th century (with many of America's most important Founding Fathers being farmers), were important to its nature. Their manifesto was a critique of the rapid industrialization and urbanization during the first few decades of the 20th century in the southern United States and elsewhere. It posited an alternative based on a return to the more traditionally rural and local/regional culture, and agrarian American values. The group opposed the rapid and destabilizing changes in the U.S. that were leading it to become more urban, national/international, and industrial. Because the book was published at the opening (1930) of what would eventually become the Great Depression
, some viewed it as particularly prescient. The book's stance was anti-communist.
Seward Collins
, editor of The American Review
, praised Benito Mussolini
and Adolf Hitler
for thwarting a communist
revolution in Germany. He published some essays by Agrarians in 1933. In 1936, Allen Tate
published a critique of fascism in The New Republic
to distance the Agrarians from Collins.
Robert Penn Warren
emerged as the most accomplished of the Agrarians. He became a major American poet and novelist, winning the Pulitzer Prize
for his 1946 All the King's Men
. At a reunion of the Fugitive Poets in 1956, he confessed that for about a decade — from just before World War II to some years after — he had shut Agrarianism from his mind as irrelevant to the cataclysmic social and political events then playing out in the world. Now, however, he believed that, rather than being irrelevant, his old Agrarian enthusiasms were tied into the major problems of the age. In the modern world, the individual had been marginalized, stripped of any sense of responsibility, or of past or place. "In this context," writes Paul V. Murphy, "the Agrarian image of a better antebellum
South came to represent for Warren a potential source of spiritual revitalization. The past recalled, not as a mythical 'golden age' but 'imaginatively conceived and historically conceived in the strictest readings of the researchers', could be a 'rebuke to the present'."
It was Warren's concern with democracy, regionalism, personal liberty and individual responsibility that led him to support the civil rights movement
, which he depicted in his nonfiction works Segregation (1956) and Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965) as a struggle for identity and individualism. As Hugh Ruppersburg, among others, has argued, Warren's support for the civil rights movement paradoxically stemmed from Agrarianism, which by the 1950s meant something very different to him from the Agrarianism of I'll Take My Stand. As Warren's political and social views evolved, his notion of Agrarianism evolved with them. He came to support more progressive
ideas and racial integration
, and was a close friend of the eminent African-American author Ralph Ellison
. While Donald Davidson took a leading role in the attempt to preserve the system of segregation, Warren took his stand against it. As Paul V. Murphy writes, "Loyalty to the southern past and the ambiguous lessons of Agrarianism led both men in very different directions."
I'll Take My Stand was originally criticized as a reactionary
and romanticized defense of the Old South
and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy
. Some critics considered it to be moved by nostalgia
. More recently, however, scholars such as Allan C. Carlson
, Joseph Scotchie, and Eugene Genovese have re-evaluated the book in light of the problems of highly urbanized/industrialized modern societies. They acknowledge the effects which such urban-technological-industrial systems exert on human society as a whole, as well as on individuals, the environment, politics, economics, etc.
Today, the Southern Agrarians are lauded regularly in the Southern Partisan
. Some of their social, economic, and political ideas have been refined and updated by writers such as Allan C. Carlson and Wendell Berry
. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute
has published books which further explore the ideas of the Agrarians.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, who joined together to write a pro-Southern
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
agrarian
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
manifesto, a collection of essays published in 1930 entitled I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition (ISBN 080713208X).
The Southern Agrarians formed an important branch of American populism
Populism
Populism can be defined as an ideology, political philosophy, or type of discourse. Generally, a common theme compares "the people" against "the elite", and urges social and political system changes. It can also be defined as a rhetorical style employed by members of various political or social...
. They contributed to the revival of Southern literature
Southern literature
Southern literature is defined as American literature about the Southern United States or by writers from this region...
in the 1920s and 1930s now known as the Southern Renaissance
Southern Renaissance
The Southern Renaissance was the reinvigoration of American Southern literature that began in the 1920s and 1930s with the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, Caroline Gordon, Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Katherine Anne Porter, Allen Tate, Tennessee Williams, and Robert Penn Warren, among...
. Most met each other as faculty and students at Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
.
Members
The Southern Agrarians included:- Donald DavidsonDonald Davidson (poet)Donald Grady Davidson was a U.S. poet, essayist, social and literary critic, and author...
, poet, essayist, reviewer and historian - John Gould FletcherJohn Gould FletcherJohn Gould Fletcher was an Imagist poet and author. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to a socially prominent family. After attending Phillips Academy, Andover Fletcher went on to Harvard University from 1903 to 1907, when he dropped out shortly after his father's death.Fletcher lived in...
, poet and historian - Henry Blue KlineHenry Blue KlineHenry Blue Kline was an American writer. He is perhaps best known for his contribution to the volume I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition as a member of the Southern Agrarians.-Biography:...
- Lyle H. LanierLyle H. LanierLyle H. Lanier was an American writer professor, and university administrator. He is perhaps best known for his contribution to the volume I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition as a member of the Southern Agrarians....
- Andrew Nelson LytleAndrew Nelson LytleAndrew Nelson Lytle was an American novelist, dramatist, essayist and professor of literature. He was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and early in his life planned to be an actor and playwright...
, poet, novelist and essayist - Herman Clarence NixonHerman Clarence NixonHerman Clarence Nixon was an American writer. He is perhaps best known for his contribution to the volume I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition as a member of the Southern Agrarians.-Biography:...
- Frank Lawrence OwsleyFrank Lawrence OwsleyFrank Lawrence Owsley was an American historian who taught at Vanderbilt University for most of his career, where he specialized in southern history and was a member of the Southern Agrarians.-Life and career:...
, historian - John Crowe RansomJohn Crowe RansomJohn Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
, poet, professor, essayist - Allen TateAllen TateJohn Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
, poet - John Donald WadeJohn Donald WadeJohn Donald Wade was an American biographer, author, essayist, and teacher.-Biography:Wade was born in Marshallville, Georgia. His father was a country doctor. Wade was descended from the first Governor of Georgia....
, biographer and essayist - Robert Penn WarrenRobert Penn WarrenRobert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
, poet, novelist, essayist and critic - Stark YoungStark YoungStark Young was an American teacher, playwright, novelist, painter, literary critic and essayist.-Biography:Stark Young was born in Como, Mississippi to Mary Clark Starks and Alfred Alexander Young, a local physician....
, novelist, drama and literary critic, playwright
Background and general ideas of the Southern Agrarians
The Agrarians evolved from a philosophical discussion group known as the "Fugitives" or "Fugitive Poets". Many of the Southern Agrarians and Fugitive poets were connected to Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
, either as students or as faculty members. Davidson, Lytle, Ransom, Tate, and Warren all attended the university; Davidson and Ransom later joined the faculty, along with Wade and Owsley. They were moved to respond by their studies of poetic modernism and by H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
's scathing critique of Southern culture. They were offended not so much by his widely publicized essay "The Sahara of the Bozart", with which they tended to agree, but by his subsequent bitter attacks on aspects of Southern culture that they valued, such as its agrarianism, conservatism, and religiosity. They sought to confront the widespread and rapidly increasing effects of modernity, urbanism, and industrialism on American (but especially Southern) culture and tradition. The informal leader of the Fugitives and the Agrarians was John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom
John Crowe Ransom was an American poet, essayist, magazine editor, and professor.-Life:...
, but in a 1945 essay he announced that he no longer believed in either the possibility or the desirability of an Agrarian restoration, which he declared a "fantasy". The most eloquent exponent of the Agrarian philosophy eventually proved to be Ransom's student Richard M. Weaver
Richard M. Weaver
Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as a shaper of mid- 20th century conservatism and as an authority on modern rhetoric...
, a friend of Donald Davidson. Unlike the others, Weaver taught at a Northern institution, the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
. Other writers associated with the Agrarians include Caroline Gordon
Caroline Gordon
Caroline Ferguson Gordon was a notable American novelist and literary critic who, while still in her thirties, was the recipient of two prestigious literary awards, a 1932 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 1934 O...
, Brainard Cheney
Brainard Cheney
Brainard Cheney was a novelist, playwright and essayist from Georgia associated primarily with the literary movement known as the Agrarians.-Biography:...
and Herbert Agar
Herbert Agar
Herbert Sebastian Agar was an American journalist and an editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal. He won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1934 for his book The People's Choice, a critical look at the American presidency...
.
The Southern Agrarians bemoaned the increasing loss of Southern identity and culture to industrialization. They believed that the traditional agrarian roots of the United States, which dated back to the nation's founding in the 18th century (with many of America's most important Founding Fathers being farmers), were important to its nature. Their manifesto was a critique of the rapid industrialization and urbanization during the first few decades of the 20th century in the southern United States and elsewhere. It posited an alternative based on a return to the more traditionally rural and local/regional culture, and agrarian American values. The group opposed the rapid and destabilizing changes in the U.S. that were leading it to become more urban, national/international, and industrial. Because the book was published at the opening (1930) of what would eventually become the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, some viewed it as particularly prescient. The book's stance was anti-communist.
Seward Collins
Seward Collins
Seward Bishop Collins was an American New York socialite and publisher. By the end of the 1920s, he was a self-described "fascist".-Biography:...
, editor of The American Review
The American Review
- 19th century :The American Review, alternatively known as The American Review: A Whig Journal and The American Whig Review, was a New York City-based periodical in the 19th century...
, praised Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
and Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
for thwarting a communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
revolution in Germany. He published some essays by Agrarians in 1933. In 1936, Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
published a critique of fascism in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
to distance the Agrarians from Collins.
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren
Robert Penn Warren was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the influential literary journal The Southern Review with Cleanth Brooks in 1935...
emerged as the most accomplished of the Agrarians. He became a major American poet and novelist, winning the Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
for his 1946 All the King's Men
All the King's Men
All the King's Men is a novel by Robert Penn Warren first published in 1946. Its title is drawn from the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. In 1947 Warren won the Pulitzer Prize for All the King's Men....
. At a reunion of the Fugitive Poets in 1956, he confessed that for about a decade — from just before World War II to some years after — he had shut Agrarianism from his mind as irrelevant to the cataclysmic social and political events then playing out in the world. Now, however, he believed that, rather than being irrelevant, his old Agrarian enthusiasms were tied into the major problems of the age. In the modern world, the individual had been marginalized, stripped of any sense of responsibility, or of past or place. "In this context," writes Paul V. Murphy, "the Agrarian image of a better antebellum
History of the United States (1789–1849)
With the election of George Washington as the first president in 1789, the new government acted quickly to rebuild the nation's financial structure. Enacting the program of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, the government assumed the Revolutionary war debts of the state and the national...
South came to represent for Warren a potential source of spiritual revitalization. The past recalled, not as a mythical 'golden age' but 'imaginatively conceived and historically conceived in the strictest readings of the researchers', could be a 'rebuke to the present'."
It was Warren's concern with democracy, regionalism, personal liberty and individual responsibility that led him to support the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
, which he depicted in his nonfiction works Segregation (1956) and Who Speaks for the Negro? (1965) as a struggle for identity and individualism. As Hugh Ruppersburg, among others, has argued, Warren's support for the civil rights movement paradoxically stemmed from Agrarianism, which by the 1950s meant something very different to him from the Agrarianism of I'll Take My Stand. As Warren's political and social views evolved, his notion of Agrarianism evolved with them. He came to support more progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...
ideas and racial integration
Racial integration
Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of race, and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely...
, and was a close friend of the eminent African-American author Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison
Ralph Waldo Ellison was an American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer. He was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Ellison is best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953...
. While Donald Davidson took a leading role in the attempt to preserve the system of segregation, Warren took his stand against it. As Paul V. Murphy writes, "Loyalty to the southern past and the ambiguous lessons of Agrarianism led both men in very different directions."
I'll Take My Stand was originally criticized as a reactionary
Reactionary
The term reactionary refers to viewpoints that seek to return to a previous state in a society. The term is meant to describe one end of a political spectrum whose opposite pole is "radical". While it has not been generally considered a term of praise it has been adopted as a self-description by...
and romanticized defense of the Old South
Old South
Geographically, Old South is a subregion of the American South, differentiated from the "Deep South" as being the Southern States represented in the original thirteen American colonies, as well as a way of describing the former lifestyle in the Southern United States. Culturally, the term can be...
and the Lost Cause of the Confederacy
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
The Lost Cause is the name commonly given to an American literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the U.S. South to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War of 1861–1865...
. Some critics considered it to be moved by nostalgia
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
. More recently, however, scholars such as Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson
Allan C. Carlson is a scholar and professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is the president of the Howard Center, a director of the Family in America Studies Center, the International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and editor of the Family in America...
, Joseph Scotchie, and Eugene Genovese have re-evaluated the book in light of the problems of highly urbanized/industrialized modern societies. They acknowledge the effects which such urban-technological-industrial systems exert on human society as a whole, as well as on individuals, the environment, politics, economics, etc.
Today, the Southern Agrarians are lauded regularly in the Southern Partisan
Southern Partisan
Southern Partisan is a right-wing political magazine published in the United States founded in 1979 that focuses on its Southern region and those states that were formerly members of the Confederate States of America. Its first editor was Thomas Fleming...
. Some of their social, economic, and political ideas have been refined and updated by writers such as Allan C. Carlson and Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...
. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Intercollegiate Studies Institute
The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Inc., or ', is a non-profit educational organization founded in 1953 as the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists...
has published books which further explore the ideas of the Agrarians.
Quotes
A key quote from the "Introduction: A Statement of Principles" to their 1930 book I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition:"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."