A backward glance; the Southern renascence, the autobiographical epic, and the classical legacy.

9781572336599

A backward glance; the Southern renascence, the autobiographical epic, and the classical legacy.

Millichap, Joseph R.

U. of Tennessee Press

2009

240 pages

$39.95

Hardcover

PS261

Many have glanced at relationships between two, and sometimes even all three, of the phenomena Millichap (emeritus English, Western Kentucky U.) examines, but none have traced out the connections in detail and at length until now, he says. After describing the autobiographical epic as a genre, he samples seven practitioners of it in the American South from Allan Tate's recovered memories to Ralph Ellison before and after Invisible Man. Others include Caroline Gordon and the heroic cycles, Thomas Wolfe's odyssey and anabasis in O Lost, and father figures and dead languages in Robert Penn Warren. Earlier versions of all the chapters have been tested before live audiences.

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