Low Price Guarantee
We Take School POs
Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity
Contributor(s): Cobb, James C. (Author)

View larger image

ISBN: 0195315812     ISBN-13: 9780195315813
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Retail: $20.99OUR PRICE: $15.32  
  Buy 25 or more:OUR PRICE: $14.06   Save More!
  Buy 100 or more:OUR PRICE: $13.43   Save More!


  WE WILL NOT BE UNDERSOLD!   Click here for our low price guarantee

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: January 2007
Qty:

Annotation: From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag, here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity, served in an engaging blend of history, literature, and popular culture. In this insightful book, written
with dry wit and sharp insight, James C. Cobb explains how the South first came to be seen--and then came to see itself--as a region apart from the rest of America.
As Cobb demonstrates, the legend of the aristocratic Cavalier origins of southern planter society was nurtured by both northern and southern writers, only to be challenged by abolitionist critics, black and white. After the Civil War, defeated and embittered southern whites incorporated the
Cavalier myth into the cult of the "Lost Cause," which supplied the emotional energy for their determined crusade to rejoin the Union on their own terms. After World War I, white writers like Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner and other key figures of "Southern Renaissance" as well as their African
American counterparts in the "Harlem Renaissance"--Cobb is the first to show the strong links between the two movements--challenged the New South creed by asking how the grandiose vision of the South's past could be reconciled with the dismal reality of its present. The Southern self-image
underwent another sea change in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, when the end of white supremacy shook the old definition of the "Southern way of life"--but at the same time, African Americans began to examine their southern roots more openly and embrace their regional, as well as racial,
identity. As the millennium turned, the South confronted a newidentity crisis brought on by global homogenization: if Southern culture is everywhere, has the New South become the No South?
Here then is a major work by one of America's finest Southern historians, a magisterial synthesis that combines rich scholarship with provocative new insights into what the South means to southerners and to America as well.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States - State & Local - South (al,ar,fl,ga,ky,la,ms,nc,sc,tn,va,wv)
- History | Social History
- History | United States - 19th Century
Dewey: 975
Physical Information: 1.05" H x 6.5" W x 9.22" L (1.24 lbs) 416 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - South
Features: Bibliography, Index, Table of Contents
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag, here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity, served in an engaging blend of history, literature, and popular culture. In this insightful book, written
with dry wit and sharp insight, James C. Cobb explains how the South first came to be seen--and then came to see itself--as a region apart from the rest of America.

As Cobb demonstrates, the legend of the aristocratic Cavalier origins of southern planter society was nurtured by both northern and southern writers, only to be challenged by abolitionist critics, black and white. After the Civil War, defeated and embittered southern whites incorporated the
Cavalier myth into the cult of the Lost Cause, which supplied the emotional energy for their determined crusade to rejoin the Union on their own terms. After World War I, white writers like Ellen Glasgow, William Faulkner and other key figures of Southern Renaissance as well as their African
American counterparts in the Harlem Renaissance--Cobb is the first to show the strong links between the two movements--challenged the New South creed by asking how the grandiose vision of the South's past could be reconciled with the dismal reality of its present. The Southern self-image
underwent another sea change in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, when the end of white supremacy shook the old definition of the Southern way of life--but at the same time, African Americans began to examine their southern roots more openly and embrace their regional, as well as racial,
identity. As the millennium turned, the South confronted a new identity crisis brought on by global homogenization: if Southern culture is everywhere, has the New South become the No South?

Here then is a major work by one of America's finest Southern historians, a magisterial synthesis that combines rich scholarship with provocative new insights into what the South means to southerners and to America as well.

 
Customer ReviewsSubmit your own review
 
To tell a friend about this book, you must Sign In First!