Southern Modernism

Southern Modernism is a genre of southern literature very closely related to modernism. It is a period of time in which poets/ authors begun experimenting with forms and interpreting and reacting to new technologies and ideas that were developing in the early twentieth century. Authors began moving away from traditional southern themes like community and family. Traditional pastoral (country) themes were combined with new modern viewpoints and authors reacted the souths usual traditions with modern breakaways from such traditions. Authors like Faulkner dealt with modern mans breakaway from nature and community and new forms and ideas that were very modernist. Some characteristics of southern modernist writers such as Robert Penn Warren and Walker Percy include disruption of chronological order, multiple viewpoints, and an internal thinking and brooding first person. Also the idea of time as an enemy became popular. Modernists were reacting to events of the time period such as the horrors of World War I and were also reacting to and rejecting many of the ideas of the enlightenment period. Southern modernist writers were doing the same things as modernists (implementing new forms and new ways of thinking about things such as evolution etc.) except they were reacting them with the souths strong traditions and way of life as well.