Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-222) and index
"In this succinct study, Scott Romine considers a key paradox that has been associated with the concept of "community" from the beginning of modern southern literary criticism: namely, that communities often valued for their cohesiveness and moral stability were at the same time sites of oppression along race and class lines. How were communities so deeply divided able to maintain even the appearance of organic cohesiveness? The Narrative Forms of Southern Community contains close readings of five narratives - Augustus Baldwin Longstreet's Georgia Scenes, John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow Barn, Thomas Nelson Page's In Ole Virginia, William Alexander Percy's Lanterns on the Levee, and William Faulkner's Light in August - that attempt to mediate or negotiate the social tensions inherent in the stratified world they represent."--Jacket
Negotiating community : Augustus Baldwin Longstreet's Georgia scenes -- Plantation community : John Pendleton Kennedy's Swallow barn and Thomas Nelson Page's In ole Virginia -- Aesthetics of community : William Alexander Percy's Lanterns on the levee -- Narrating the community narrating : William Faulkner's Light in August -- Whence the community? : some thoughts on contemporary Southern fiction
