Southern Agrarians
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The Southern Agrarians or 'Vanderbilt Agrarians' were a group of 12 American Traditionalist writers and poets from the Southern United States who joined together to publish the Agrarian manifesto, a collection of essays entitled I'll Take My Stand in 1930. They formed an important conservative branch of American populism.
[edit] Members
The Southern Agrarians included:
- John Crowe Ransom
- Donald Davidson
- Frank Lawrence Owsley
- John Gould Fletcher
- Lyle H. Lanier
- Allen Tate
- Herman Clarence Nixon
- Andrew Nelson Lytle
- Robert Penn Warren
- John Donald Wade
- Henry Blue Kline
- Stark Young
[edit] Beliefs
The Agrarians evolved from a philosophical discussion group known as 'The Fugitives' or 'Fugitive Poets' whose studies of poetic modernism and H.L. Mencken led them to confront the effect of modernity on Southern culture and tradition.
The Agrarians were opposed to unbridled Modernism and Industrialism and bemoaned the loss of traditional Southern culture. Their manifesto was an attack on modern industrial America and posited an alternate direction based on a return to traditional American values especially what later was called republicanism.
Seward Collins, editor of The American Review which published some of the essays in 1933, praised Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler for thwarting a communist revolution in Germany. Allen Tate wrote a rebuttal of fascism for The New Republic in 1936 in an effort to distance himself from Collins.
Robert Penn Warren, who became one of the group's most famous members, was noted for a liberal political philosophy and support for racial integration that set him apart from the right wing leanings often associated with the Agrarians.
I'll Take My Stand was originally criticized as a reactionary and romanticized defense of the Old South and viewed as nothing more than backward-looking nostalgia. In recent years some scholars have taken a second look at this book in light of the problems of modern industrial society and its effect on the human condition and the environment.
Today, the Southern Agrarians are lauded regularly in a quarterly, Southern Partisan, published in South Carolina. Their philosophy has been refined and updated by scholars such as Allan C. Carlson and the poet Wendell Berry. It is frequently explored by presses such as ISI Books, the book imprint of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.
[edit] Bibliography
- Allan Carlson. The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America (2004)
- Paul V Murphy. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought (2001)
- Emily Bingham and Thomas A Underwood, eds.The Southern Agrarians and the New Deal: Essays After I'll Take My Stand (2001)
- Clay Morton, "Southern Orality and 'Typographic America': I'll Take My Stand Reconsidered," in Conflict in Southern Writing (2006)
