Prologue: John Randolph and the Inwardness of History -- - The Fable of the Agrarians and the Failure of the American Republic -- - A Fable of White and Black: Jefferson, Madison, Tate -- - History and the Will of the Artist: Elizabeth Madox Roberts -- - War and Memory: Quentin Compson's Civil War -- - The Tenses of History: Faulkner -- - The Poetry of Criticism: Allen Tate -- - The Loneliness Artist: Robert Penn Warren -- - The Last Casualty of the Civil War: Arthur Crew Inman -- - From Thoreau to Walker Percy: Home by Way of California; or, The End of the Southern Renascence -- - Epilogue: A Personal Fable: Living with Indians
