Stories with a Moral: Literature and Society in Nineteenth-century GeorgiaUniversity of Georgia Press, 2000 M01 1 - 394 pages Stories with a Moral is the first comprehensive study of the effects of plantation society on literature and the influences of literature on social practices in nineteenth-century Georgia. During the years of frontier settlement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, Georgia authors voiced their support for the slave system, the planter class, and the ideals of the Confederacy, presenting a humorous, passionate, and at times tragic view of a rapidly changing world. Michael E. Price examines works of fiction, travel accounts, diaries, and personal letters in this thorough survey of King Cotton's literary influence, showing how Georgia authors romanticized agrarian themes to present an appealing image of plantation economy and social structure. Stories with a Moral focuses on the importance of literature as a mode of ideological communication. Even more significant, the book shows how the writing of one century shaped the development of social practices and beliefs that persist, in legend and memory, to this day. |
Contents
CHAPTER ONE Breaking New Ground | 15 |
CHAPTER TWO Tending the Rich Crop | 61 |
CHAPTER THREE LayBy Time | 113 |
CHAPTER FOUR A Harvest of Fire | 159 |
CHAPTER FIVE Reclaiming the Scorched Earth | 199 |
CHAPTER SIX Back in Tall Cotton | 243 |
EPILOGUE A November Cotton Flower | 288 |
NOTES | 295 |
| 353 | |
| 379 | |
Common terms and phrases
American Andrews antebellum Athens Atlanta Augusta Augustus Baldwin Longstreet Baton Rouge Bill Arp Burge century Chapel Hill Charles Charles Henry Smith Children of Pride Civil Company Confederate cotton crop Culture Diary domestic elite farm farmers freedmen frontier Geor Georgia authors Georgia Historical Quarterly Georgia Press Georgia Scenes Guy Rivers Hentz historian household humor humorists Ibid ideological Joel Chandler Harris Journal Kemble land letters Liberty County literary literature Lost Cause Louisiana State University Macon Major Jones Mary Melish Middle Georgia moral Moreland negro niggers North Carolina Press northern Old South Olmsted Oxford University Press paternalism plantation mistresses plantation slavery plantation society planters political postbellum proslavery race racial readers Reconstruction reprint republican rural Savannah servants Sherman's Sidney Lanier Simms sketches slaveholding slavery slaves Smith social Southern story tion town traveler accounts Uncle Remus University of Georgia University of North women wrote Yankee yeoman York