Apples and Ashes: Literature, Nationalism, and the Confederate States of America

294 Pages·2012·2.32 MB·English

by  Coleman Hutchison

Apples and Ashes
Series Editors
Jon Smith, Simon Fraser University
Riché Richardson, Cornell University
Advisory Board
Houston A. Baker Jr., Vanderbilt University
Jennifer Greeson, The University of Virginia
Trudier Harris, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
John T. Matthews, Boston University
Tara McPherson, The University of Southern California
Apples and Ashes
Literature, Nationalism,
and the Confederate States
of America
COLEMAN HUTCHISON
The University of Georgia Press Athens and London
© 2012 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
All rights reserved
Set in Sabon by Graphic Composition, Inc.,
Bogart, Georgia
Printed digitally in the United States of America
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hutchison, Coleman, 1977–
Apples and ashes : literature, nationalism, and the Confederate States of
America / Coleman Hutchison.
p. cm. — (The new Southern studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-8203-3731-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8203-3731-5 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-13:978-0-8203-4244-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8203-4244-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. American literature—Southern States—History and criticism. 2. Politics and
literature—Southern States—History—19th century. 3.Confederate States of
America—Intellectual life. 4. Regionalism—Southern States—History—19th
century. 5. Group identity—Southern States—History—19th century. 6. United
States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Social aspects. I. Title.
PS261.H882012
810.9'35875—dc23 2011037743
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-4365-5
In memory of Betty and Jim
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For the South to neglect to employ every instrumentality appertaining
to the production of a vigorous, healthy, native, loyal and benefi cent
literature; for her to depend almost exclusively upon foreign sources
for her reading, and, outside of local politics, for her thinking, would
be to manifest a fatal hesitation—to throw away a magnifi cent
future—to doom herself to dwell amid the defi lements and
abominations of a detested past, and famishing in arid plains, to feed
upon apples of ashes.
quoted in the Southern Literary Messenger, October 1861
The voices of reaction have to be encountered in all their complexity
and not assumed to be self- evident or dismissed as too off ensive.
Jay Fliegelman, “Anthologizing the Situation of American Literature”
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Contents
List of Figures xi
Introduction. Great Expectations: The Imaginative Literature of the
Confederate States of America 1
One. A History of the Future: Southern Literary Nationalism before
the Confederacy 18
Two. A New Experiment in the Art of Book- Making: Engendering the
Confederate National Novel 63
Three. Southern Amaranths: Popularity, Occasion, and Media in a
Confederate Poetics of Place 99
Four. The Music of Mars: Confederate Song, North and South 143
Five. In Dreamland: The Confederate Memoir at Home and Abroad 173
Acknowledgments 205
Notes 209
Works Cited 241
Index 265