The Enchanted Country: Northern Writers in the South 1865-1910 by Anne Rowe

This monograph struck me as thin. It's obviously pretty short, but I think there was also something methodologically lacking. The author's argument is that after the Civil War, Northern writers who write about the South increasingly write about it as an "enchanted country." It seems to escape the tawdry industrialization and modernization of the North. This enchanted aspect also seems to come from an admiration of the courtly behavior and life style of an idealized upper class. I guess my concerns about Rowe's method are two-fold: first, it seems like she's trying to make a cultural argument, but the readings rely heavily only on primary texts, so I'm not buying her cultural connections; second, at times I got the feeling that she herself was caught up in the awe/hero worship of a type of southern gentility. Still, I thought the readings themselves were strong, and she's obviously read a lot of the works of writers who don't get as much critical attention.