Shadow and Shelter : The Swamp in Southern Culture

In Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture, Anthony Wilson examines the relationship between the ecological history of the Southern swamp and the evolution of Southern culture from the colonial era to the present. To early European colonists and to the plantation elite, the swamp was a place linked with sin and impurity, and a practical obstacle to agricultural development. For many of those excluded from the white southern aristocracy—African Americans, Native Americans, Acadians, and poor, rural whites—the swamp meant something very different, providing shelter and sustenance, and offering separation and protection from the dominant plantation culture. This book explores the interplay of contradictory but equally prevailing metaphors: first, the trope of the swamp as the underside of the myth of pastoral Eden that defined the antebellum South; and second, the more recent figuration of the swamp as the last pure vestige of un-dominated but ever-threatened southern eco-culture. As the South comes to look more and more like the rest of America, colonized by the relentless progress of strip malls and suburban sprawl, southern wooded wetlands have come to embody the last part of the South that will always be beyond cultural dominion. Shadow and Shelter charts this transformation as reflected in literary works as varied as William Byrd II’s History of the Dividing Line and Linda Hogan’s Power, as well as in films, legislation, personal memoirs, and the tourist industry. Examining the southern swamp from a perspective informed by ecocriticism, literary studies, and ecological history, Shadow and Shelter considers the many representations of the swamp and its evolving role in an increasingly multicultural South.

To early European colonists the swamp was a place linked with sin and impurity; to the plantation elite, it was a practical obstacle to agricultural development. For the many excluded from the white southern aristocracy—African Americans, Native Americans, Acadians, and poor, rural whites—the swamp meant something very different, providing shelter and sustenance and offering separation and protection from the dominant plantation culture.

Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture explores the interplay of contradictory but equally pre-vailing metaphors: first, the swamp as the underside of the myth of pastoral Eden that defined the antebellum South; and second, the swamp as the last pure vestige of undominated southern eco-culture. As the South gives in to strip malls and suburban sprawl, its wooded wetlands have come to embody the last part of the region that will always be beyond cultural domination.

Examining the southern swamp from a perspective informed by ecocriticism, literary studies, and ecological history, Shadow and Shelter considers the many repre-sentations of the swamp and its evolving role in an increasingly multicultural South.

Anthony Wilson is assistant professor of English at LaGrange College. His work has been published in the Southern Literary Journal and the Chronicle of Higher Education's online edition.

"In Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture, Anthony Wilson examines the relationship between the ecological history of the southern swamp and the evolution of southern culture from the colonial era to the present. To early European colonists, the swamp was a place linked with sin and impurity. To the plantation elite, it was a practical obstacle to agricultural development. For the many excluded from the white southern aristocracy - African Americans, Native Americans, Acadians, and poor, rural whites - the swamp meant something very different, providing shelter and sustenance and offering separation and protection from the dominant plantation culture."--Jacket. The swamp and antebellum southern identity The southern swamp in the Civil War, Reconstruction, and beyond The swamp in the twentieth-century South The swamp in the postmodern South : conservation, simulation, and commodification.