Plantation tradition is a genre of literature based in the

Southern United States The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, Dixieland, or simply the South) is List of regions of the United States, census regions defined by the United States Cens ...

that is heavily nostalgic for

antebellum Antebellum, Latin for "before war", may refer to: United States history * Antebellum South, the pre-American Civil War period in the Southern US ** Antebellum Georgia ** Antebellum South Carolina ** Antebellum Virginia * Antebellum architectu ...

times. The ideology is that of the

Lost Cause of the Confederacy The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, known simply as the Lost Cause, is an American pseudohistory, pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that argues the cause of the Confederate States of America, Confederate States during the America ...

, though this specific genre is often called "The Plantation Myth."Tyler Parry, "Slavery, the Plantation Myth, and Alternative Facts," ''Black Perspectives'' (December 6, 2017), https://www.aaihs.org/slavery-the-plantation-myth-and-alternative-facts/> The decades before the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

saw several works idealizing the plantation, such as John Pendleton Kennedy's 1832 ''The Swallow Barn''. However, plantation tradition became more popular in the late-nineteenth century as a reaction against slave narratives like those of

Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, February 14, 1818 – February 20, 1895) was an American social reformer, Abolitionism in the United States, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was the most impor ...

, and abolitionist novels like ''

Uncle Tom's Cabin ''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'' is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two Volume (bibliography), volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans ...

''. Prominent writers in the plantation tradition include

Thomas Nelson Page Thomas Nelson Page (April 23, 1853 – November 1, 1922) was an American lawyer, politician, and writer. He served as the List of United States ambassadors to Italy, U.S. ambassador to Italy from 1913 to 1919 under the administration of Presiden ...

(1853-1922) and Harry Stillwell Edwards (1855-1938). Other writers, especially

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

writers, soon satirized the genre: Charles W. Chesnutt's '' The Conjure Woman'' (1899), for example, "consciously evoke the conventions of the plantation novel only to subvert them".

References

External links

Plantation Tradition in Local Color Fiction
Literary genres History of literature in the United States Southern United States in fiction 19th-century American literature Lost Cause of the Confederacy {{Lit-genre-stub