The Realist Reinvention of the South: Aesthetic Violence and Modernist New Beginnings in the (Human) Nature Poetry of Madison Cawein

The late nineteenth century is commonly seen as the height of realist fiction, in particular local color prose. This detailed attention to sites of marginalization was intended to foster more inclusive forms of understanding.... [ view full abstract ]

The late nineteenth century is commonly seen as the height of realist fiction, in particular local color prose. This detailed attention to sites of marginalization was intended to foster more inclusive forms of understanding. Southern local color, however, especially the Plantation Tradition, seemed to function as the exception. It quite literally naturalized cultural amnesia when it comes to violence and racism. In such a field of negative over-determination, the godfather of American realism, William Dean Howells, made an unexpected move. He locates the possible renewal of realism in a realm that seemed doubly removed from the realist literary mainstream in terms of geography and genre, namely the Southern nature poetry of Madison Cawein.

Removing human beings but bringing to the foreground an often alienating Southern landscape, Cawein forces readers to think about the politics behind patterns of sadness that point to human responsibility without incriminating anyone. Cawein’s landscapes include modernist-like lists and sometimes consciously indulge in idealizations that are often questioned by elements of haunting. In Southern natural scenes that were commonly devoid of violence in popular contexts, the sheer accumulation of detail itself becomes a point of violent saturation. Moreover, when discussing lynching Cawein actually withholds gory details and creates eerily depersonalized landscapes that are deeply political. Tapping into descriptive expectations about the South that were used as an excuse not to intervene, Cawein disrupts reader assumptions. As such, he encourages his audience to become conscious of what they look at, what they expect, and why.