ENGL 3216 - Southern Literature

3 hours

Prerequisites: A grade of “C”or better in ENGL 2110 or ENGL 2120 or ENGL 2210 or ENGL 2220 or ENGL 2310 or ENGL 2320. The Southern United States is often distinguished from the rest of the United States as a culture of history and memory in a “great nation of futurity” as John L. O’Sullivan described it in the mid-nineteenth century. Today we know that there are many histories and memories associated with the literatures of the U.S. South. This course examines relationships among a number of literary traditions: the literatures of slavery (plantation fiction and slave narratives); the literatures of pastoral (local color, Civil War fiction, Southern agrarianism, and Southern modernism); counter-pastoral literature (Old Southwest humor, counter-pastoral fiction and the Southern grotesque).