Southern Agrarians

Southern Agrarians
Name	Southern Agrarians
Caption	Group of contributors to I'll Take My Stand (1930)
Founded	1920s
Region	Southern United States
Notable works	I'll Take My Stand
Associated people	John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, Andrew Lytle, Laura Riding

Southern Agrarians were a loose confederation of writers, intellectuals, and critics centered in the Southern United States who advocated a conservative, agrarian alternative to industrial modernity in the early twentieth century. Originating among literary circles and university faculties, their ideas fused poetic modernism, regionalism, and reactionary social thought in a pamphlet and subsequent debates that shaped interpretations of the American South, literature, and politics. Their work intersected with contemporary figures and institutions across literature, higher education, and public life.

Origins and Intellectual Background

Members emerged from networks around Vanderbilt University, Kenyon College, University of the South, and Johns Hopkins University during the 1920s and 1930s, linked to editorial projects like the Kenyon Review and the magazine The Fugitive. Influences included the poetry and criticism of T. S. Eliot, the historical studies of Charles A. Beard, the conservative thought of Edmund Burke, and the agrarian philosophy of Thomas Jefferson, John Calvin, and William Morris. Contacts with figures such as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, H. L. Mencken, and Willa Cather shaped literary techniques even as the group rejected industrial capitalism associated with Andrew Carnegie, J. P. Morgan, and the corporate structures of Standard Oil. Intellectual cross-currents also ran to international writers and thinkers like G. K. Chesterton, T. E. Hulme, Oswald Spengler, and Georg Simmel.

The Agrarian Manifesto: I'll Take My Stand

The manifesto collection I'll Take My Stand (1930) was published as a polemic responding to the cultural and economic transformations associated with the administrations of Herbert Hoover and the market forces epitomized by Henry Ford. Contributors, addressing industrialization, urbanization, and market modernity, appealed to a vision shaped by agrarian legacies tied to Thomas Jefferson and regional institutions such as plantation culture and Southern Methodist University-adjacent networks. The volume engaged with contemporaneous debates involving Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, critiques from Walter Lippmann, and responses from literary critics at The Nation and The New Republic. It provoked rejoinders from historians like Charles Beard and cultural critics including Lewis Mumford, and intersected with legal and constitutional discussions involving scholars at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School.

Key Figures and Affiliates

Prominent contributors included poets and critics such as John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, Andrew Nelson Lytle, and essayists like Lyle Lanier and Warren H. Carroll. Associated writers and intellectuals who interacted with or influenced the group encompassed Laura Riding, Cleanth Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Tennessee Williams, and historians like C. Vann Woodward. Editors and publishers involved networks including Alfred A. Knopf, Henry Holt and Company, Scribner's, and journals such as The Southern Review and Harper's Magazine. Academic colleagues included scholars at Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, Duke University, and Princeton University.

Ideas and Critiques (Economics, Culture, and Race)

The group advanced critiques of industrial capitalism and mass society that invoked antecedents like Thomas Jefferson and medievalist motifs from Sir Thomas More and William Morris. Economically they favored decentralized agriculture over the corporate scale exemplified by U.S. Steel and General Motors; culturally they promoted agrarian virtues as articulated against the mass culture critiques of H. L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann. The writings engaged questions of race and hierarchy in ways that intersected with Southern political realities embodied by figures such as Huey Long and legal frameworks like decisions of the United States Supreme Court; critics compared their positions to contemporaries including W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and Booker T. Washington. Their aesthetic program influenced critical methods used by scholars such as I. A. Richards and Cleanth Brooks in promoting formalist readings associated with New Criticism.

Influence and Legacy

The movement affected twentieth-century literary criticism, pedagogy, and regional studies, informing curricula at institutions like Vanderbilt University, Kenyon College, and University of Virginia. Authors who trained in or reacted to Agrarian ideas include Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and John Berryman, while historians and public intellectuals such as C. Vann Woodward, Frank L. Owsley, and Bertram Wyatt-Brown engaged with Agrarian themes. The group's imprint is visible in debates over the New Deal, postwar conservatism associated with William F. Buckley Jr., and cultural conservatism at organizations like the American Enterprise Institute and the National Review.

Controversies and Criticism

Critics charged Agrarian positions with defending racial hierarchy and romanticizing plantation life, drawing rebuttals from W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and left-leaning journals such as The New Republic and The Nation. Scholars including Eric Foner, Ira Berlin, and Saidiya Hartman have examined economic and racial implications of Agrarian nostalgia, while legal scholars at Howard University and Harvard Law School placed their ideas in the context of segregation-era jurisprudence exemplified by Plessy v. Ferguson and reactions to Brown v. Board of Education. Literary opponents included modernists like Ezra Pound and critics such as Lionel Trilling.

Decline and Continued Reappraisals

By mid-century many original proponents, including John Crowe Ransom and Robert Penn Warren, shifted positions or were reassessed as American politics and scholarship evolved with the civil rights movement led by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers. Later reassessments by scholars such as Glen Jeansonne, Alan Trachtenberg, and Dionne Brand—and institutional studies at Vanderbilt University and The University of North Carolina—have produced nuanced readings that situate the movement within broader currents involving Southern literature, American conservatism, and debates over regional identity. Contemporary conferences and special issues in journals such as American Quarterly and Modernism/modernity continue to revisit their legacy alongside postwar figures like William Styron and Flannery O'Connor.

Category:American literary movements Category:Southern United States history