"One of the anomalies of the American literary imagination has been its inability—in spite of the vast amount of ink consumed in the effort—to derive a major poem, novel, or play from the central crisis in the national existence. This failure seems even more curious because one of the prominent characteristics of the southern literary mind, at least of the white literary mind, has been the compulsive remembrance of the Civil War. But the southern writer—and this would appear to be a primary reason for the want of a southern War and Peace—has been less concerned to reconstruct the actual time of the struggle than to recount the consequent loss of the antebellum southern culture and, in the response to this loss, the creation of a postbellum culture of survival."
This quote is more of a negative quote towards the literature during the Civil War. Authors were more interested in writing about how great the past used to be than to document what is really going on, which is a major part of America's history.
Simpson, L. P. (n.d.). Civil War in Literature. Retrieved February 8, 2012, from Documenting the American South: http://www.docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/civilwar.html
No comments:
Post a Comment