On Matters Southern: Essays About Literature And Culture, 1964-2000

Marion Montgomery, family man, citizen, professor, literary critic, poet, philosopher, is a prolific defender of the poetic, cultural and critical vision of the Fugitive poets, the Southern Agrarian writers, and the New Critics of the 20th century. He has published more than 20 major works of criticism in the past 40 years.

This volume presents 16 of his essays, selected and edited by Michael M. Jordan with a foreword by noted historian Eugene D. Genovese. It is a good introduction to the thinking and writing of a man who speaks for southern conservatism with passion and imagination, with head and heart, exercising both faith and reason.

This work is divided into five sections--＂The Author at Work and at Home,＂ ＂On Place and Region,＂ ＂On Fugitives, Agrarians, and New Critics,＂ ＂On Individual Authors＂ and ＂On Books and Schooling.＂ In the essays Montgomery discusses the importance of place in all serious literature, but especially in southern letters. He notes differences between southern and northern fiction. He pays tribute to Andrew Lytle, Madison Jones, and M.E. Bradford, and explicates the fiction of Walker Percy. Taken together, the essays reveal Montgomery’s gifts and temperament: a keen intellect combined with a reverential awareness of the importance of tradition.

The late Marion Montgomery was professor emeritus of English at the University of Georgia. In 2003, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute honored Montgomery with the Gerhart Niemeyer Award for Distinguished Contributions to Scholarship in Liberal Arts. He lived in Crawford, Georgia. Editor Michael M. Jordan is associate professor of English and department chairman at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where he has been teaching literature and composition for the last 15 years. He has written for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, Modern Age, The University Bookman, The Southern Partisan and other journals of scholarship and opinion.