ORALITY AND SOUTHERN LITERATURE by CLAY ALLEN MORTON (Under the Direction of Hubert McAlexander) ABSTRACT For most if not all of its history, the South has been marked by a high degree of oral residue that has distinguished it from the rest of the United States. This study explores the influence of residual orality on Southern literature. The first chapter provides the historical background necessary to gauge the South’s resistance to the transformative powers of typographic literacy. Education, reading habits, publishing, and the literary life are discussed. Chapter Two synthesizes research on oral language with stylistic analyses of Southern literary works, specifically James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones (1927) and Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart (1954), in order to illustrate the oral bent of Southern writing. Next, two well-known short stories, William Gilmore Simms’s “Sharp Snaffles” (1870) and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (1930) are shown to be characterized by the strategies of folk narrative. While “Sharp Snaffles” corresponds to a well-documented and ancient oral narrative pattern, “A Rose for Emily” is an essentially typographic work that is organized according to an oral storytelling structure. Finally, the characteristically oral modes of thought and expression cataloged by Walter J. Ong are compared to certain well-known theories of Southern exceptionalism, especially those outlined in the Southern Agrarian manifesto I’ll Take My Stand (1930) and Zora Neale Hurston’s “Characteristics of Negro Expression” (1934). These oral Southern epistemologies are shown to be significant to Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) and to the poetry of Donald Davidson. These discussions provide not only a new theory of Southern exceptionalism, but also a new theoretical framework for reading Southern texts. INDEX WORDS: American literature, Southern literature, orality, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, James Weldon Johnson, William Gilmore Simms, Donald Davidson, Zora Neale Hurston ORALITY AND SOUTHERN LITERATURE by CLAY ALLEN MORTON B.A., University of South Carolina Aiken, 1997 M.A., University of Georgia, 2000 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2005 © 2005 Clay Allen Morton All Rights Reserved ORALITY AND SOUTHERN LITERATURE by CLAY ALLEN MORTON Major Professor: Hubert McAlexander Committee: Richard Menke Hugh Ruppersburg Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2005 DEDICATION For Gail and Jake iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgment is made to my committee members. Hubert McAlexander and Richard Menke worked with me on this project from its inception, and their insight and encouragement have been invaluable. Hugh Ruppersburg was extremely gracious in stepping in at the last minute to round out the committee. Other faculty members whose generous assistance helped shape sections of this dissertation include Valerie Babb, James Kibler, Michael Moran, and Carl Rapp. I am also grateful to the University of Georgia Graduate School, which supported my work on this project in the form of a Dissertation Completion Assistantship for academic year 2004-05. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ...............................................................................viii INTRODUCTION....................................................................................1 CHAPTER 1 THE ORAL CHARACTER OF SOUTHERN CULTURE...............22 Literacy and Education......................................................26 Writing and Publishing.......................................................44 2 TOWARD A POETICS OF SOUTHERN ORALITY .....................73 James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones........................76 Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart........................................95 3 ORALITY AND SOUTHERN NARRATIVE: PATTERN AND STRUCTURE.................................................................... 108 Pattern: Simms’s “Sharp Snaffles”.................................... 112 Structure: Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”.......................... 128 4 SOUTHERN EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF ORALITY..................................................................... 153 What Once Was Sung: Donald Davidson .......................... 162 Making the Dream the Truth: Zora Neale Hurston............ 186 vi CODA................................................................................................ 204 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................................. 214 vii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: The Honey-Trickster Pattern ............................................... 120 Figure 2: The Narrative Structure of “A Rose for Emily”...................... 139 viii