Inherent Defeatism in Barry Hannah’s “The Agony of T. Bandini” and “Uncle High Lonesome”

Authors

  • Julia Merkel

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.132

Abstract

William Faulkner’s themes and motifs are topical for the (literary) South to the present day, expressed by an inherent defeatism and structural pessimism. This reading of Barry Hannah’s short stories “The Agony of T. Bandini“ and “Uncle High Lonesome“ traces this heritage by identifying Hannah’s settings and psychological environment as ones of anticipated failure and lethargic acceptance of fate.

Author Biography

Julia Merkel

Julia Merkel holds an M.A. degree in American Studies, Political Science, and Law from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main. Her MA thesis is entitled “Writing Against the Odds: The South’s Cultural and Literary Struggle Against Progress and Modernity.“ Since October 2009 Julia Merkel is a doctoral student and recipient of the H. Engelhorn Doctoral Scholarship at the Heidelberg Center of American Studies (HCA) at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. She is working on her PhD thesis with the working title “Dixie First, American Second: Prevailing Southern Literary Tradition in the 21st Century.“

Downloads

How to Cite

Merkel, Julia. “Inherent Defeatism in Barry Hannah’s “The Agony of T. Bandini” and ‘Uncle High Lonesome’”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 11, Mar. 2012, doi:10.5283/copas.132.

Issue

Vol. 11 (2010)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.