Tennessee literature

[1] A notable work produced in this period is George Tucker's The Valley of Shenandoah (1824), which explored life on a Virginia plantation whilst also uniquely criticising slavery.

[6] The original members of the group consisted of Donald Davidson, Alec B. Stevenson, William Yandel Elliott, Stanley Johnson, Walter Clyde Curry, John Crowe Ransom and Sidney Mttron Hirsch.

[10] Agee was an influential film critic in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s whilst also producing classics such as A Death in the Family and Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

McCarthy is known for advancing the style known as ‘Southern Gothic’ and exploring human desires and motivations by building worlds in which normal laws and moral codes do not apply.

[14] The New York Times describes Taylor as being “arguably the past century’s best American practitioner of the short story”, despite only achieving proper fame upon receiving a Pulitzer prize for a novel.

This view is widely denounced by 21st century scholars as false, due to its denial of slavery being by far the most important issue the Confederate states were fighting for.

More controversy, also from his Civil War History, is his admiring portrayal of confederate general Nathan Bedford Forest, who was also the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

[16] Academic T. Bjerre, in Oxford reference, describes Southern Gothic literature as including “the presence of irrational, horrific, and transgressive thoughts, desires, and impulses; grotesque characters; dark humor, and an overall angst-ridden sense of alienation.”[17] It is a prominent style and remains so to this day.

[18] Southern Literature has a strong attachment to the physical surroundings from which it derives, likely due to its agrarian past and its history as a self-defined culture, separate from the rest of the United States in its traditions and way of life.

An example of a particularly recent text which embodies all the discussed stylistic aspects of Southern Literature is the 2014 American television series True Detective, created by Nic Pizzolato.

The CWG started in 2001, by graduates from the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, as a monthly meeting for poetry readings, but quickly expanded into an organisation that spans many more demographics and genres.

[25] It publishes a wide variety of fiction, poetry and discursive essays from both students and the wider community of Tennessee and the southern United States.

Grist included unpublished short stories, poetry and creative nonfiction, whilst also holding the “Pro Forma Contest” each Spring alongside the publication of the magazine.