Southern Literature: A Blending of Oral, Visual & Musical Voices
The blending of oral traditions, visual arts, and music has influenced how Southern writers shape their region’s narrative voice. In the South, writing and storytelling intersect. Mark Twain introduced readers to these storytellers in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Twain blends both black and white voices within Huck’s consciousness and awareness – in Huck’s speech and thoughts – and in his dialogues with Jim. A narrative link exists between the South’s visual artists and writers; Southern writers, after all, live in the most closely seen region in America. The spiritual, gospel, and rock and roll are musical genres that Southern writers love – although jazz, blues, and ballads might have the most influence on their work. Southern poets and scholars have produced anthologies, textbooks, and literary journals that focus on the region’s narrative voice and its black and white literary traditions. Southern writers have created stories that touch the heart and populate American literature with voices of the American South. Future Southern writers will continue to embrace the region as a place where oral, visual, and musical traditions are interwoven with literature.
This essay reflects my perspective as a folklorist who for the past forty years has studied the American South and the intersection of the region’s literature with oral traditions, visual arts, and music.1 The blending of these worlds has had a significant impact on Southern writers and how they shape their region’s narrative voice.2 Perhaps more than any other region in America, the South is a place where writing and storytelling intersect. Nail by nail, as carpenters of the imagination, Southern writers construct their region’s narrative, and the tale and its telling are the grist for this literary mill.
Mark Twain introduced his readers to these storytellers in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the novel that forever defined the American narrative–a narrative with its heart in the tale. As Twain reminded his readers, “The art of telling a humorous story– understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print –was created in America, and has remained at Home.”3 When Huck declares he will “light out for . . .