PhD ThesisBoth my novel and the critical work explore Southern places, how they are
defined and how Southern people imbue them with meaning—sometimes multiple and
paradoxical meanings—and, in turn, how those places define them. In my novel, The
Gospel According to No One, narratives tied to place are pitted against each other: New
South versus Old South, fundamentalism versus liberalism, nihilism versus the mythic
worldview, and the Agrarian Proprietary Ideal versus what some scholars see as the
homogenizing forces of Late Capitalism. The struggles between these discourses threaten
to undo order within the city. Those who survive forge new identities from the fragments
of postmodernism, inventing new narratives about both themselves and the places they
inhabit.
My work on Eudora Welty also examines multiple Southern discourses. I argue
that Welty’s self-conscious focus on reproductions of the South in Delta Wedding and
The Optimist’s Daughter challenges the idea of a monolithic South, which also challenges
any definitive categorization of Welty and her relationship to the imagined (the only
‘real’) South.
In the bridging section of the work, I explain why I chose Welty as a subject of
study, explore connections between postmodernism and Southern literature, suggest a
definition of the South that is reflective of Place, and examine my creative work in light
of the theoretical issues I have encountered
