The Southern Agrarians were twelve American Southerners who wrote an agrarian literary manifesto in 1930. They and their essay collection, ''I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition'', contributed to the

Southern Renaissance The Southern Renaissance (also known as Southern Renascence) was the reinvigoration of American Southern literature in the 1920s and 1930s with the appearance of writers such as William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Caroline Gordon, Margaret Mitchell, ...

, the reinvigoration of

Southern literature Southern United States literature consists of American literature written about the Southern United States or by writers from the region. Literature written about the American South first began during the colonial era, and developed significant ...

in the 1920s and 1930s. They were based at

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and rail magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided the school its initial $1-million ...

in Nashville.

John Crowe Ransom John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 – July 3, 1974) was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. As a faculty member at Kenyon ...

was their unofficial leader, though

Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the lit ...

became their most prominent member. The membership overlaps with The Fugitives.

Members

The twelve authors of the Southern Agrarians manifesto, ''I'll Take My Stand'', were: * Donald Davidson, poet, essayist, reviewer and historian * John Gould Fletcher, poet and historian * Henry Blue Kline *

Lyle H. Lanier Lyle H. Lanier (January 11, 1903 – December 30, 1988) was an American experimental psychologist and writer. As a faculty member at Vanderbilt University from 1929 to 1938, Lanier published research comparing the mental abilities of whites and ...

* Andrew Nelson Lytle, poet, novelist and essayist * Herman Clarence Nixon * Frank Lawrence Owsley, historian *

, poet, professor, essayist * Allen Tate, poet *

John Donald Wade John Donald Wade (September 28, 1892 – October 9, 1963) was an American biographer, author, essayist, and teacher. Early life Wade was born in Marshallville, Georgia. His father was a country doctor who served as a surgeon in the Civil War. Wa ...

, biographer and essayist *

, poet, novelist, essayist and critic, later first poet laureate of the United States *

Stark Young Stark Young (October 11, 1881 – January 6, 1963) was an American teacher, playwright, novelist, painter, literary critic, translator, and essayist. Early life Stark Young was born on October 11, 1881 in Como, Mississippi. His father, Alfre ...

, novelist, drama and literary critic, playwright Other writers associated with the Agrarians include

Richard M. Weaver Richard Malcolm Weaver, Jr (March 3, 1910 – April 1, 1963) was an American scholar who taught English at the University of Chicago. He is primarily known as an intellectual historian, political philosopher, and a mid-20th century conservative a ...

, Caroline Gordon,

Brainard Cheney Brainard Cheney (June 3, 1900 – January 15, 1990) was an American novelist, playwright, speechwriter and essayist from Georgia who was associated with the Southern Agrarians literary movement Cheney's writing career covered four decades. He ...

and

Herbert Agar Herbert Sebastian Agar (29 September 1897 – 24 November 1980) was an American journalist and historian, and an editor of the '' Louisville Courier-Journal''. Early life Herbert Sebastian Agar was born September 29, 1897 in New Rochelle, New Yor ...

Background and general ideas

The Agrarians evolved from a philosophical discussion group known as the "Fugitives" or " Fugitive Poets". Many of the Southern Agrarians and Fugitive poets were connected to

, either as students or as faculty members. Davidson, Lytle, Ransom, Tate, and Warren all attended the university; Davidson and Ransom later joined the faculty, along with Wade and Owsley. They were known also as "Twelve Southerners", the "Vanderbilt Agrarians", the "Nashville Agrarians", the "Tennessee Agrarians", and the "Fugitive Agrarians". They were offended by H. L. Mencken's attacks on aspects of Southern culture that they valued, such as its agrarianism, conservatism, and religiosity. They sought to confront the widespread and rapidly increasing effects of modernity, urbanism, and industrialism on American (but especially Southern) culture and tradition. The Agrarians were influenced by the medievalism of Victorian writers

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy. Born in Ecclefechan, ...

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and pol ...

and

William Morris William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He w ...

, as well as the French right-wing tradition that began with Counter-Enlightenment philosopher Joseph de Maistre, which they accessed through the writings of contemporaries

T. E. Hulme Thomas Ernest Hulme (; 16 September 1883 – 28 September 1917) was an English critic and poet who, through his writings on art, literature and politics, had a notable influence upon modernism. He was an aesthetic philosopher and the 'fathe ...

, T. S. Eliot and

Charles Maurras Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras (; ; 20 April 1868 – 16 November 1952) was a French author, politician, poet, and critic. He was an organizer and principal philosopher of ''Action Française'', a political movement that is monarchist, anti-parl ...

. The informal leader of the Fugitives and the Agrarians was

, but in a 1945 essay, he announced that he no longer believed in either the possibility or the desirability of an Agrarian restoration, which he declared a "fantasy".

''I'll Take My Stand''

''I'll Take My Stand'' was criticized at the time, and since, as a reactionary and romanticized defense of the Old South and the

Lost Cause of the Confederacy The Lost Cause of the Confederacy (or simply Lost Cause) is an American pseudohistorical negationist mythology that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. Fir ...

. It ignored slavery and denounced "progress", for example, and some critics considered it to be moved by nostalgia. A key quote from the "Introduction: A Statement of Principles" to their 1930 book ''I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition'': Though the book was reviewed widely, it only sold about 2000 copies as of 1940.

Other publications

Most of the Southern Agrarians contributed to a second collection of essays, ''Who Owns America?'' (1936), which also included writings from English distributists. The Agrarians were the most prolific contributors to '' The American Review'', edited by

Seward Collins Seward Bishop Collins (April 22, 1899 – December 8, 1952) was an American New York socialite and publisher. By the end of the 1920s, he was a self-described "fascist". Biography Collins was born in Syracuse, New York to Irish Catholic paren ...

. Various Agrarians contributed as many as 70 articles, led by Donald Davidson with 21. Scholar Louis Menand has identified many of their contributions as influential in spreading the idea of

New Criticism New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as ...

to the United States from Britain. Collins eventually became a public supporter of fascism. Several of the Agrarians came to regret (and renounce) their relationship with Collins, however, after his political views became better known. Agrarian Allen Tate wrote a rebuttal of fascism for the liberal ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...

'' in 1936. Nevertheless, Tate remained in contact with Collins and continued to publish in ''The American Review'' until its demise, in 1937.

Chapel Hill Sociologists

In the 1930s, the Agrarians were challenged by the modernizing social scientists (the "Chapel Hill Sociologists") based at the University of North Carolina (in Chapel Hill) and led by Howard W. Odum, on issues of urbanism, social progress, and the very nature and definition of the South. The sociologists produced Rupert Vance's ''The Human Geography of the South'' (1932), and Odum's ''Southern Regions of the United States'' (1936), as well as numerous articles in the journal ''Social Forces.'' The sociologists argued that the problems in the South stemmed from traditionalism which ought to and could be cured by modernization, the opposite of the Agrarian viewpoint.

Robert Penn Warren

emerged as the most accomplished of the Agrarians. He became a major American poet and novelist, winning the

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

for his 1946 '' All the King's Men''. At a reunion of the Fugitive Poets in 1956, Warren confessed that for about a decade — from just before World War II to some years after — he had shut Agrarianism from his mind as irrelevant to the cataclysmic social and political events then playing out in the world. Now, however, he believed that, rather than being irrelevant, his old Agrarian enthusiasms were tied into the major problems of the age. In the modern world, the individual had been marginalized, stripped of any sense of responsibility, or of past or place. "In this context," writes Paul V. Murphy, "the Agrarian image of a better antebellum South came to represent for Warren a potential source of spiritual revitalization. The past recalled, not as a mythical 'golden age' but 'imaginatively conceived and historically conceived in the strictest readings of the researchers', could be a 'rebuke to the present'."Murphy, Paul V. (2001)
''The Rebuke of History'': Introduction
, University of North Carolina Press. It was Warren's concern with democracy, regionalism, personal liberty and individual responsibility that led him to support the

civil rights movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

, which he depicted in his nonfiction works ''Segregation'' (1956) and ''Who Speaks for the Negro?'' (1965) as a struggle for identity and individualism. As Hugh Ruppersburg, among others, has argued, Warren's support for the civil rights movement paradoxically stemmed from Agrarianism, which by the 1950s, meant for him something very different from the Agrarianism of ''I'll Take My Stand''. As Warren's political and social views evolved, his notion of Agrarianism evolved with them. He came to support more progressive ideas and

racial integration Racial integration, or simply integration, includes desegregation (the process of ending systematic racial segregation). In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportuni ...

and was a close friend of the eminent African-American author

Ralph Ellison Ralph Waldo Ellison (March 1, 1913 – April 16, 1994) was an American writer, literary critic, and scholar best known for his novel ''Invisible Man'', which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote '' Shadow and Act'' (1964), a collec ...

. While Donald Davidson took a leading role in the attempt to preserve the system of segregation, Warren took his stand against it. As Paul V. Murphy writes, "Loyalty to the southern past and the ambiguous lessons of Agrarianism led both men in very different directions."

Legacy

Louis D. Rubin Jr. assessed the Agrarians in 1979:

In retrospect the importance of ''I'll Take My Stand'' lay in its vigorous reaffirmation of religious humanism and its farseeing critique of the abuses of unchecked industrial exploitation. In certain crucial respects it is far closer in spirit and intent to works such as
Henry David Thoreau Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817May 6, 1862) was an American naturalist, essayist, poet, and philosopher. A leading transcendentalist, he is best known for his book ''Walden'', a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and h ...
's ''
Walden ''Walden'' (; first published in 1854 as ''Walden; or, Life in the Woods'') is a book by American transcendentalist writer Henry David Thoreau. The text is a reflection upon the author's simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part ...
'', Edward Bellamy's '' Looking Backward'', and T. S. Eliot's "
The Waste Land ''The Waste Land'' is a poem by T. S. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central work of Modernist poetry in English, modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the ...
" in its rebuke to an acquisitive business society. This, and not its topical prescriptions for the southern economy of the day, largely accounts for its continuing importance.

In 1981, University of Georgia Press published ''Why the South Will Survive: Fifteen Southerners Look at Their Region a Half Century after'' I'll Take My Stand, with contributions from Donald L. Anderson (1932–2004), M. E. Bradford, Cleanth Brooks, Thomas Fleming, Samuel T. Francis, George Garrett, William C. Havard, Hamilton C. Horton Jr., Thomas H. Landess, Marion Montgomery, John Shelton Reed, George C. Rogers Jr.,

David B. Sentelle David Bryan Sentelle (born February 12, 1943) is a Senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Early life, family and education David Sentelle was born in Canton, North Carolina. ...

, and

Clyde N. Wilson Clyde Norman Wilson (born 11 June 1941) is a retired American professor of history at the University of South Carolina, a paleoconservative political commentator, a long-time contributing editor for ''Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture' ...

, with an afterword by Lytle. In recent decades, some American traditional conservatives such as

Allan C. Carlson Allan C. Carlson (born 1949 in Des Moines, Iowa) is a scholar and former professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is the President Emeritus of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, former director of the ...

, Joseph Scotchie, and Eugene Genovese have praised the Agrarian themes in light of what they see as the failures of highly urbanized and industrialized modern societies.. Today, the Southern Agrarians are regularly lauded in neo-Confederate media such as the '' Southern Partisan''. Some of their social, economic, and political ideas have been refined and updated by writers such as Allan C. Carlson and

Wendell Berry Wendell Erdman Berry (born August 5, 1934) is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of ...

. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has published books which further explore the ideas of the Agrarians.

References

Bibliography

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