Jeffrey J. Folks Libri

Focusing on the often-overlooked conservative strands in American literature, this book examines the works of notable writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O'Connor, and V.S. Naipaul. It highlights the traditionalist themes present in their writings and draws on the theories of influential thinkers such as Lewis P. Simpson and Roger Scruton. By providing a fresh perspective, the text sheds light on a significant yet underrepresented aspect of American literary discourse, making it an essential read for those interested in diverse literary viewpoints.

From Richard Wright to Toni Ethics in Modern and Postmodern American Narrative studies the relationship of literature to contemporary ethical problems. Focusing on southern and African American writers, this book employs theoretical approaches from ethnicity studies, regional criticism, and postcolonial theory. It intends to insert a reading of ethics into the critical study of fictional and nonfictional narratives by Richard Wright, James Agee, Flannery O’Connor, Ernest J. Gaines, Walker Percy, Richard Ford, Toni Morrison, and other modern and postmodern American writers.

Drawing on the theories of philosophers of ethics including Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, Damaged Lives: Southern and Caribbean Narrative from Faulkner to Naipaul studies how moral skepticism harms ordinary human beings. In response to an indecisive and uncommitted culture, many writers from the American South and the Caribbean have sought unambiguous sources of order and belief. Damaged Lives shows how a yearning for conviction pervades the writing of William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Agee, Flannery O'Connor, Mary Hood, and V. S. Naipaul. This book will be useful in courses on modern American and Caribbean literature as well as in courses on ethics, American studies, and cultural studies.

As Andrew Lytle noted, southern fiction has been written «in a time of disorder» that has its origin in a post-Enlightenment privileging of unconstrained individualism and personal freedom. Southern writers from Edgar Allan Poe to Flannery O’Connor have employed narrative form in efforts to restore order and meaning, often despite the conviction that society is governed to a great extent by mere chance or injustice. In a Time of Disorder examines the ways in which southern writers, including Twain, Faulkner, Wright, and Welty, have struggled to wrest form and meaning from a historical world increasingly perceived as purposeless, disordered, and corrupt. Although southern writers have responded to a sense of cultural disorder in various ways, ranging from religious orthodoxy to skepticism, their fictions express a common need to explore sources of order and meaning or, at the very least, to confront their absence.