Flashes of a southern spirit : meanings of the spirit in the U.S. South / Charles Reagan Wilson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wilson, Charles Reagan.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Regionalism--Southern States.

Regionalism.

Group identity--Southern States.

Group identity.

Spiritual life--Social aspects--Southern States.

Spiritual life.

Spirituality--Social aspects--Southern States.

Spirituality.

Southern States--Civilization.

Southern States.

Southern States--Religious life and customs.

Southern States--Religion--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (288 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, c2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Flashes of a Southern Spirit explores meanings of the spirit in the American South, including religious ecstasy and celebrations of regional character and distinctiveness. Charles Reagan Wilson sees ideas of the spirit as central to understanding southern identity. The South nurtured a patriotic spirit expressed in the high emotions of Confederates going off to war, but the region also was the setting for a spiritual outpouring of prayer and song during the civil rights movement. Arguing for a spiritual grounding to southern identity, Wilson shows how identifications of the spirit are crucial to understanding what makes southerners invest so much meaning in their regional identity. From the late nineteenth-century invention of southern tradition to early twenty-first-century folk artistic creativity, Wilson examines a wide range of cultural expression, including music, literature, folk art, media representations, and religious imagery. He finds new meanings in the works of such creative giants as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Elvis Presley, while at the same time closely examining little-studied figures such as the artist/revivalist McKendree Long. Wilson proposes that southern spirituality is a neglected category of analysis in the recent flourishing of interdisciplinary studies on the South-one that opens up the cultural interaction of blacks and whites in the region.

Contents:

The invention of southern tradition : the writing and ritualization of southern history, 1880-1930

The burden of southern culture

Saturated southerners : the South's poor whites and southern regional consciousness

Our land, our country : Faulkner, the South, and the American way of life

The myth of the biracial South

Beyond the Sahara of the Bozart : creativity and southern culture

Flashes of the spirit : creativity and southern religion

The word and the image : self-taught art, the Bible, the spirit, and southern creativity

Apocalypse South : McKendree Long and southern evangelicalism

"Just a little talk with Jesus" : Elvis Presley, religious music, and southern spirituality

Richard Wright's pagan Spain : a southern Protestant abroad

A journey to southern religious studies

Afterword : constructing and experiencing the spirit.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786613586810

9781280491580

1280491582

9780820339566

0820339563

OCLC:

759158820