Southern Agrarians

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The Southern Agrarians or 'Vanderbilt Agrarians' were a group of 12 American Traditionalist writers and poets from the Southern United States who joined together to publish the Agrarian manifesto, a collection of essays entitled I'll Take My Stand in 1930. They formed an important conservative branch of American populism.

[edit] Members

The Southern Agrarians included:

• John Crowe Ransom
• Donald Davidson
• Frank Lawrence Owsley
• John Gould Fletcher
• Lyle H. Lanier
• Allen Tate
• Herman Clarence Nixon
• Andrew Nelson Lytle
• Robert Penn Warren
• John Donald Wade
• Henry Blue Kline
• Stark Young

[edit] Beliefs

The Agrarians evolved from a philosophical discussion group known as 'The Fugitives' or 'Fugitive Poets' whose studies of poetic modernism and of H.L. Mencken's stinging critique of Southern culture led them to confront the effect of modernity on Southern culture and tradition. The informal leader of the Fugitives and Agrarians was John Crowe Ransom. He formally repudiated agrarianism in a 1945 essay. The most eloquent exponent of the Agrarian philosophy eventually proved to be Ransom's student and Donald Davidson's friend, Richard M. Weaver. Rather surprisingly, Weaver taught at a Northern institution, the University of Chicago.

The Agrarians were opposed to unbridled modernism and industrialism, and bemoaned the loss of traditional Southern culture. Their manifesto was an attack on modern industrial America and posited an alternate direction based on a return to traditional American values especially what later was called republicanism.

Seward Collins, editor of The American Review which published some essays by Agrarians in 1933, praised Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler for thwarting a communist revolution in Germany. Allen Tate published a critique of fascism in the 1936 The New Republic, to distance himself (and the other Agrarians) from Collins.

Robert Penn Warren eventually emerged as the most accomplished of the Agrarians, not only as a major American poet but also as a novelist, especially for his 1946 All the King's Men. Warren's later political and social views, in particular his espousing a liberal political philosophy and his support for racial integration, set him apart from the conservatism of the Agrarians.

I'll Take My Stand was originally criticized as a reactionary and romanticized defense of the Old South, and viewed as little more than useless nostalgia. In recent years, scholars such as Carlson, Scotchie, Genovese and others have taken a second look at this book in light of the problems of modern industrial society and its effect on the human condition and the environment.

Today, the Southern Agrarians are lauded regularly in the pro-South Southern Partisan. Their philosophy has been refined, updated, and lived by scholars such as Allan C. Carlson and the writer Wendell Berry. It has been explored in books published by ISI Books, the book imprint of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute.

[edit] Bibliography

• Bingham, Emily, and Thomas A Underwood, eds., 2001. The Southern Agrarians and the New Deal: Essays After I'll Take My Stand.
• Carlson, Allan, 2004. The New Agrarian Mind: The Movement Toward Decentralist Thought in Twentieth-Century America.
• Morton, Clay, 2006. "Southern Orality and 'Typographic America': I'll Take My Stand Reconsidered" in Conflict in Southern Writing.
• Murphy, Paul V., 2001. The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought.
• Scotchie, Joseph, "Agrarian Valhalla: The Vanderbilt 12 and Beyond," Southern Events.