The Classical Origins of Southern Literature

This work explores the continuation of the Classical literary tradition in Southern literature from the Colonial era to the present. It contrasts American writing outside the South which attacked or consciously undermined the Classics with a Southern literature that staunchly adhered to the eternal verities of the Classical tradition.

The work treats both major and minor Southern writers throughout her four centuries. This continued influence is responsible for the global interest in Southern literature.

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James Everett Kibler, Ph.D

Dr. Kibler is author of six volumes on William Gilmore Simms, most recently Poetry and the Practical (University of Arkansas Press), Selected Poems of W.G. Simms (University of Georgia Press and University of South Carolina Press), and William Gilmore Simm’s Selected Reviews on Literature and Civilization (University of South Carolina Press). He has been restoring his early South Carolina plantation home since 1989 and is reforesting it’s acres with native hardwoods. The plantation is the subject of Our Fathers’ Fields, which won the Fellowship of Southern Writers Award for nonfiction in 2000. An author of Southern literature himself, his Poems from Scorched Earth appeared from Charleston Press in 2000. His novels, Child to the Waters, Walking Toward Home, and The Education of Chauncey Doolittle were published by Publican Press. He is currently completing novels Tiller and The Gentler Gamester. His Taking Root: The Nature Writings of Willian and Adam Summer of Pomaria will appear from the University of South Carolina Press in 2017.