Postregional fictions : Barry Hannah and the challenges of southern studies / Clare Chadd and Scott Romine.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chadd, Clare, author.

Romine, Scott, author.

Series:

Southern Literary Studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Authenticity (Philosophy) in literature.

Southern States--In literature.

Southern States.

Hannah, Barry--Criticism and interpretation.

Hannah, Barry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (329 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Baton Rouge, Louisiana : Louisiana State University Press, [2021]

Summary:

Drawing from recent debates about the validity of regional studies and skepticism surrounding the efficacy of the concept of authenticity, Clare Chadd's Postregional Fictions focuses on questions of southern regional authenticity in fiction published by Barry Hannah from 1972 to 2001. The first monograph on the Mississippi author's work to appear since his death, this study considers the ways in which Hannah's novels and short stories challenge established conceptual understandings of the U.S. South. Hannah's writing often features elements of metafiction, through which the putative sense of "southernness" his stories dramatize is complicated by an intense self-reflexivity about the extent to which a sense of place has never been foundational or essential but has always been constructed and performed. Such texts locate a productive terrain between the local and the global, with particular relevance for critical apprehensions of the post-South and postsouthern literature. Offering sustained close readings of selected stories, and focusing especially on Hannah's late work, Chadd argues that his fiction reveals the region constantly shifting in a process of mythmaking, dialogue, and performance. In turn, she uses Hannah's work to suggest how notions of the "South" and "southernness" might survive the various deconstructive approaches leveled against them in recent decades of southern studies scholarship. Rather than seeing an impasse between the regional and the global, Chadd's reading of Hannah shows the two existing and flourishing in tandem.In Postregional Fictions, Chadd offers a new interpretation of Hannah based on an appreciation of the vital intersection of southern and postmodern elements in his work.

Contents:

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

INTRODUCTION The Storied South: Footsteps in the Snow

1 The Problem of Reference in the Late-Twentieth-Century South

2 The Authenticity Paradox and the Myth of Masculinity

3 The Burden of Postsouthern History “Uncle High Lonesome” and “The Agony of T. Bandini”

4 Southern Decline and the Politics of Nostalgia “Rat-Faced Auntie”

5 Authenticity and Textuality in the Postsouthern Folktale “Evening of the Yarp: A Report by Roonswent Dover”

6 Narcissistic Narrative and the New Language of the Post-South “Get Some Young”

CONCLUSION Imagined Lacks and Literal Losses The Post-postregional South?

Notes

Works Cited

Index Generated by AI.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780807175750

0807175757

OCLC:

1245247356