288 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / no illustrations
Never in its long history has the South provided an entirely comfortable home for the intellectual. In this thought-provoking contribution to the field of southern studies, Tara Powell considers the evolving ways that major post–World War II southern writers have portrayed intellectuals—from Flannery O’Connor’s ironic view of “interleckchuls” to Gail Godwin’s southerners striving to feel at home in the academic world.
TARA POWELL is an Associate Professor of English at the Institute for Southern Studies in the University of South Carolina.
"Powell has used the trope [of Southern anti-intellectualism] as a powerful tool to rethink the development of southern literature and culture...Tara Powell takes an assured place with the leading scholars of southern letters. John Reed, the assured southern academic, would welcome her." —The Southern Literary Journal
“Powell’s study convincingly proves that the South, far from being anti-intellectual, is perhaps too devoted to pieces of ideas and fragments of myths, but fortunately the South is also home to this cadre of authors who devote their work to the life of the mind.”—Kathryn Lee Seidel, Studies in the Novel
“Powell's interpretations are consistently crisp, her subjects well chosen and thoroughly contextualized; she is a fluid writer and her attitudes about the role of the intellectual are honest and perceptive.”—Modern Fiction Studies
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