Waking Their Neighbors Up: The Nashville Agrarians Rediscovered

by Thomas Daniel Young

Overview

Stung by attacks upon the South following the celebrated Scopes “monkey trial” in the 1920s, some of the poets comprising the Fugitive group at Vanderbilt University—notably John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, Allen Tate, and Robert Penn Warren— conceived the idea of a symposium that would argue for the worth of an ordered, traditional society as an alternative to what they perceived as the increasing materialism of their times. The Fugitives were joined by eight other southerners, and the result was the 1930 Agrarian manifesto I’ll Take My Stand. Published in 1982, this retrospective look at the Nashville Agrarians traces the evolution of I’ll Take My Stand, explains what the men who made it were trying to do, and argues that time has proved them to be prophets.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780820334752
Publisher:	University of Georgia Press
Publication date:	03/01/2010
Series:	Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures Series , #24
Pages:	106
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

THOMAS DANIEL YOUNG (1919–1997) is the author or editor of many influential books on southern writers including The Literature of the South, Conversations with Malcolm Cowley,Tennessee Writers, and Gentleman in a Dustcoat: A Biography of John Crowe Ransom.

THOMAS DANIEL YOUNG (1919–1997) is the author or editor of many influential books on southern writers including The Literature of the South, Conversations with Malcolm Cowley,Tennessee Writers, and Gentleman in a Dustcoat: A Biography of John Crowe Ransom.

Editorial Reviews

[A] characteristically lively and informative book.

Journal of American Studies - Richard Gray

Young has some instructive things to say about how the Agrarians’ view of things was both like to and different from that of Emerson and Thoreau. . . . Young’s little book is a worthwhile addition to the ever-growing library of works about the Agrarians.

Southern Literary Journal - John Shelton Reed

“Young has some instructive things to say about how the Agrarians’ view of things was both like to and different from that of Emerson and Thoreau. . . . Young’s little book is a worthwhile addition to the ever-growing library of works about the Agrarians.”—John Shelton Reed, Southern Literary Journal

“[A] characteristically lively and informative book.”—Richard Gray, Journal of American Studies

From the Publisher