Remapping Southern Literature: Contemporary Southern Writers and the West

Brinkmeyer, Jr., Robert H. 2000. Remapping Southern Literature: Contemporary Southern Writers and the West Athens: University of Georgia Press. xvii + 130 pp.

Robert H. Brinkmeyer, Jr.'s most recent publication, Remapping Southern Literature: Contemporary Southern Writers and the West, was originally delivered as part of the Lamar Lecture Series at Mercer University. Reworked into three substantial chapters and a brief appendix, the text comprehensively examines of southern writers' changing conception of the American West. Although other critics have also begun to notice this relationship, Brinkmeyer was instrumental in sparking the current critical interest in the field of southern - western studies. Brinkmeyer uses place (region) in order to place (delineate) both contemporary southern writers and the trajectory of southern literature. His text is structured chronologically and spatially, awarding his analysis a dual depth and allowing him to prove how region holds a powerful "place" in the southern literary imagination.

The first section, "Embracing Place," examines the traditional characteristics of southern literature, emphasizing the works of the Nashville agrarians and writers of the Southern Renaissance. Brinkmeyer skillfully illustrates how authors from these two groups established what is generally understood as the traditional characteristics of southern literature's relationship...