Introduction

20s-40s → Southern Renaissance, deal with The South

Attempt to come to terms with the past (slaveholding) to handle socio-economic changes
after Civil War + to preserve flavour of the South
Sentimentalized idea of the South and its history → images and figures: Cavalier, “Lost
Cause”, “faithful darkie”, Sothern lady revised under lens of new era
Initially white and male initiative to preserve gendered/racialized identity of South
Include African American writers → own perspective of what meant to be a Southerner
- different perspectives of Erosion of the Old South
Countryside: contribute to revision/renovation, present tension modernity vs
provincialism
Southern Renaissance:tensions rural, agricultural, conservative society meeting
modernity
Exploration of self-consciousness, search for self-definition → common strategies
- Attention to history
- Tensions tradition vs modernity
- Oral quality of storytelling
- The vernacular
- Gendered and racialized roles

Zora Neale Hurtson, “Sweat”

Engaged in revising myth of old south

Fine observation of local custom and speech→ attention to cultural practices
Defend idea that African Americans were to
- reject deterministic connotations of their race
- show themselves as complete and undiminished human beings
Celebrate survival despite oppression, but portray forces and sources of oppression

Focus: two black protagonists, abusive relationship in black community detached from
whites
- Recall institutionalized racial separation
- Engage in sexual politics → gender intertwines with class and ethnic issues
Incorporate songs, tales, sayings of folklorik transmission → Negro Expresison
AAVE → strategy for ethnic empowerment: black speech brought to center of discourse.
- Mirror heritage, experiences, ethnic self-consciousness of African Americans
Create narrative that allows different voices to be heard
Resources → voice, thought, point of view
Narrative voice, heterodiegetic: closeness to main female character → focalization+free
indirect thought
Absence of white characters → from dynamics and narrative of slavery to gender relations
Sense of split self → confronting views of themselves
Deconstruct stereotypical portrayal of black women “mammy”
- Offer alternative images
- Problematize marriage → physical abuse, suffocating domestic atmospheres
- Delia stretches gender boundaries → woman sweats for bread
- Far from liberated: discussion on economics of slavery
 - Delia = possession, in perfect condition to be consumed
- Sykes repudiate Delia’s body
- Manhood = indolent
- woman= mule of the world → folk tradition, fervent rites, religious interpretation
Circular structure → define Delia’s life
Symbols Bible, Judeo-Christian tradition):
- Snake → hiding it = foreshadowing → snake will bring cleanliness to house
- Whip → foreshadow real snake + association: domestic violence, slaver,
original sin, phallic and violent male sexuality
- Washing → domestic work + spiritual purging; sexual impurity = dirty clothes
Justice recurrent theme
Character on porch, several purposes:
- Embody community
- Chorus that comment → popular court of justice → only God absolute authority
- Only men → women’s opinion ignored
- Hopeless scenario: cannot hope for help from community

William Faulkner “A Rose for Emliy”

Style: Symbolists aesthetic of evocative power, verbal musicality, fusion of sensations,

concern about limits of language and of realist literary techniques to represent life
Multiple narrative perspectives → inner workings of characters’ minds → winding syntax
Fictional setting → Jefferson, Mississippi
First-person plural narrator → sense of community
Keen on reversing social stereotypes → conflicts from unconventional manners
considered suspicious/frowned upon
Enigma with a final disclosure
Anachronies + voice’s limited knowledge → mystery
Gothic touch → Southern Gothic: decay, grotesque, morbid → Conventions:
- protagonist = transgressor of social rules
- Woman in danger
- Occult events
- Decaying mansion → disappearance of aristocratic system
People see Emily as theirs, emblem of moral, social, economic order in decline
- Progressive desexualization as a woman → stands for the Old South
- Defeminization defies aesthetic image of Southern Lady → implies impossible sexual
reproduction
Homer Barron stands for the North
Clash: past and present → relationship aristocrat-worker
Watch in her pocket → struggle to have it under her control
- Gold chain: she is chained to time
Synchronicity: past and present coexist → combine several historical moments
A rose never appears → disparate interpretation