This dissertation examines the literary writings of Andrew Lytle, one of the original twelve Nashville Agrarians. During the time period from the 1920's through the 1950's the South transformed from a predominantly agricultural to an industrial region. In the process, the myths of the plantation and yeoman farmer were undermined. A savage Modernist Objectivism replaced the formalistic stability of the Victorian frame of mind. Over the course of thirty years Andrew Lytle's novels, short stories and essays reveal a progression from Romanticism to Realism to Modernism. His literary creations act as a kind of looking glass into the political, economic and social changes that confronted the South But Lytle's real importance as a thinker was his ability to establish the authenticity of his social constituency, the Celtic yeoman farmers of the Southwest. The Great Depression and the Second World War destroyed the sharecropping system. The yeoman farmers were finally liberated from peonage and the mystique of the planters. Through Jung's depth psychology Lytle revealed the identity of the yeoman farmers that was always there but held at bay by superior forces. In the process, he unmasked the true character of the South. Rather than being a hierarchical 'medieval' society as the myth would have it, the South was defined by social-bond individualism, otherwise referred to as Southern libertarianism. Andrew Lytle buttressed yeoman identity and in the process, participated in the multicultural revolution that took place after the Second World War / acase@tulane.edu
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TULANE/oai:http://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/:tulane_24082 |
| Date | January 2003 |
| Contributors | Culhane, Richard Henry (Author), Teichgraeber, Richard (Thesis advisor) |
| Publisher | Tulane University |
| Source Sets | Tulane University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Access requires a license to the Dissertations and Theses (ProQuest) database., Copyright is in accordance with U.S. Copyright law |
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