5 research outputs found
Caroline Gordon Collection
No full textArrangement Description
EXTENT
Linear Feet: 2 linear feet
Number of Containers: 2 boxes
Series 1: Writings, 31 files
Series 2: Lectures, 19 files
Series 3: Courses, 10 files
Series 4: Book Reviews, 5 files
Series 5: About Caroline Gordon,8 files
Series 6: Correspondence, 18 files
Series 7: Books, 5 books
Series 8: Media: 9 digital files, 9 cassettes, 2 reelsCOLLECTION DETAILS
<---Please open FindingAid .pdf under "FILES" to see full collection details To request any materials from this collection please email: [email protected]
BIOGRAPHICAL / Historical Note: Twentieth-century novelist Caroline Gordon was born into the Kentucky line of the extensive Meriwether family in 1895. Exploration of the family's past and its evolution is a major theme of her fiction. She grew up at Merry Mont in Todd County, near Clarksville where she received her early education. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bethany College in 1916. Her father is the idealized subject of Gordon's second novel, Alec Maury, Sportsman (1934), and the central character in her much-anthologized story, "Old Red." Gordon taught briefly; then, as a journalist, she became one of the first reviewers to comment favorably on a new Nashville-based magazine of poetry, The Fugitive. During the summer of 1924, Robert Penn Warren, a Todd County neighbor, introduced her to Allen Tate. Within a year they were married and living in New York City, where their daughter, Nancy Meriwether was born. With Tate, she began a period of life abroad, devoted to writing and sustained by various fellowships granted to one or the other. In London, Gordon was secretary to the influential British writer Ford Madox. In 1930 the Tates returned to the United States and settled in Clarksville in a house provided by Tate's brother Ben and called "Benfolly." Both Tates were exceptionally hospitable to friends and encouraging to younger writers. Both were prolific correspondents, generous with constructive criticism. (Gordon eventually became mentor to several writers, most notably Flannery O'Connor). Although she had to wrest time for her writing from domestic and social obligations, the eight Benfolly years were especially productive for Gordon, who published four novels and several stories before 1937. The first novel was Penhally (1931), followed by Alec Maury, Sportsman (1934), None Shall Look Back (1937), and The Garden of Adonis (1937), studies of the southern family during the Civil War and Great Depression. Academic appointments of the 1940s took the Tates throughout the Southeast and to Princeton, where they established a home near their daughter, who married psychiatrist Percy Wood in 1944. During this time Gordon published her fifth novel, Green Centuries (1941). Her second related group of novels, The Woman on the Porch (1944), which deals with a troubled marriage, The Strange Children (1951), based on life at Benfolly, and The Malefactors (1956), is informed by her conversion to Roman Catholicism. She and her husband wrote The House of Fiction (1950), which was followed by Gordon's How to Read a Novel in 1957. Gordon lived in Princeton until 1973, teaching, and writing: The Glory of Hera (1972). An appointment in the creative writing program drew her to the University of Dallas (Gordon was 77 years old when she proposed the new creative writing program at UD). When her health began to fail in 1978, she moved to San Cristobal de las Casas in Chapas, Mexico, with her daughter and family. She died there on April 11, 1981.
COLLECTION DESCRIPTION Caroline Gordon (1895-1981) was an American author. This collection consists of manuscripts of Gordon's work, including novels, lectures, and poetry during her time at the University of Dallas. It also includes correspondence with authors and family members, writings of others, and photographs.
Lectures and Commentary available here: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14026/2548University of Dalla
Black violence and the politics of representation: selected readings in the twentieth century American novel
No full textPhDThis thesis argues that the representation of black violence in the twentieth
century American novel is shaped by two principal rhetorical strategies, which I term
denial and demonisation. Denial refers to modes of literary discourse which seek to refute
the possibility of black violence, or to circumscribe it as an exclusively intraracial
phenomenon. Demonisation denotes textual strategies which figure a racially determined
form of violence as a natural element of black character. These strategies may appear
antithetical, but they are rarely deployed in isolation. Rather, they appear in complex
combinations in most representations of black violence in American literature, as I
demonstrate using a range of novels by black and white authors which span the twentieth
century. These strategies have their roots in racist ideologies which seek to obliterate any
connection between the impact of racism upon African Americans and black violence.
Hence they are most noticeable in literary texts which reflect and contribute to racist
ideology. However, texts which seek to expose social and cultural causes of black
violence are also unavoidably influenced by these modes of literary discourse, and this
includes the work of African American authors. They have to negotiate the racist tropes
and assumptions encoded within the language and literary forms of hegemonic American
culture, because they have no alternative, completely separate resources for cultural
production. External pressures experienced by any author representing black violence
compound these difficulties. These include the demands of black community leaders and
white liberals not to represent African Americans in ways which may hinder the cause of
racial equality, and the demands of publishers to represent black violence in ways with
proven commercial potential. Furthermore, despite the retreat of racism in modern
America, certain images and fantasies of blackness retain a hold over the American
cultural imaginary, and continue to influence literary discourse. As my thesis
demonstrates, this ensures that denial and demonisation can still be detected in
contemporary American novels
